Digital business platforms are helping oversee the transformation of organisations into innovative and digital enterprises.
This is according to Anthony Butler, lead cloud advisor for IBM Middle East and Africa, who notes enterprises have tremendous amounts of data, applications and services that, although hidden behind the firewall, represent untapped opportunity.
Companies should look to unlock this value and, leveraging mobile, analytics and cloud - deliver it to end-users in a way that is engaging, he says.
With much of this value delivered via apps, developers play a fundamental role in how enterprises transform and address these new opportunities, Butler adds.
"To do this, enterprises need a platform for digital innovation - this platform, delivered from the cloud (platform-as-a-service) provides an environment where the developer can just focus on the code and the data; with everything else, such as runtimes, databases, and supporting services, provided by the cloud."
Butler says enterprises must also make use of the innovative power of their technical community.
Although this something that can be anathema to the culture in many corporate IT environments, it is critical for enterprises who want to compete in this new platform-based world, he adds.
It also means recognising that if an enterprise just looks to the developers sitting behind their own walls, they are missing out, says Butler.
Instead, enterprises need to look at how they can marshal the creative energies and talents of external developer communities, he adds.
The key characteristic of a platform-based business is that others outside the company are creating value for the enterprise - in many cases enabling entirely new digital models for the company," says Lee Naik, MD of digital and technology strategy at Accenture.
Naik says many large organisations are struggling to innovate on the inside, but through collaboration with entrepreneurs on the outside, they can tap into open innovation.
The right platform gives enterprises the opportunity to start thinking and acting like start-ups - at start-up speed, says Butler.
"It can help them innovate to address new opportunities, new markets and deliver new value in new ways. Developers can rapidly test ideas, deploy code and get feedback to evolve. It can be game-changing."
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