Getting real about software

For some time now, the software industry has been talking about better alignment with business and if the recent Citrix iForum 2005 and The Best of SAP World Tour 2005 are anything to go by, we appear to be closer to achieving that goal than ever before.

Running through the specifications and features of the latest offerings from these vendors, it became immediately clear that the days of business having to adapt processes to take advantage of computerisation are long gone. Good riddance, I say.

It was also clear that software vendors are responding to more or less the same set of challenges facing business organisations and aiming to provide companies with the information technology they need to support flexible business strategies.

Apart from high security and low cost, process automation, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, data protection, policy-driven control, consolidation, standardisation, and adaptability are the commonly addressed business imperatives.

Standardisation is the most encouraging because interoperability is finally becoming a reality to reduce cost and complexity as organisations look beyond technology to find a competitive edge.

One of the common value propositions from Citrix and SAP is to reduce the cost of running and integrating IT systems through standardisation to enable organisations to increase investment in strategies aimed at growing the business. It makes sense, doesn`t it?

According to Simon Carpenter, director of strategic initiatives for SAP Africa, innovation is key to gaining a competitive edge and growing business. However, he points out that in today`s business environment it is innovation at the business process level that counts because new products and services are easily copied and duplicated.

The days of business having to adapt processes to take advantage of computerisation are long gone.

Warwick Ashford, portals managing editor, ITWeb

With this perspective, SAP has opted to use a services-oriented architecture (SOA) to enable business to adapt its businesses processes rapidly in response market changes.

This approach is consistent with an increasingly common view that business is best served by concentrating on its core competencies and satisfying all other requirements by partnering with experts in those fields.

Web-based applications appear to be becoming a popular and effective way of delivering services, particularly those designed to improve access to improve collaboration, communication, and access to information. Both Citrix and SAP are pursuing real-time collaboration services that enable desktop sharing and virtual workgroup conferencing.

Enlightened business has long recognised the need to break out of rigid vertical silo structures and work horizontally, but technology and, more specifically, software is finally delivering practical ways of doing that. About time too.

Another welcome development has been towards greater simplicity. By hiding unnecessary complexity, new generation software enables users to focus on their tasks, management to focus on business processes, and IT departments focus on services.

While SAP supports the ideal of empowering organisations to build composite applications to best meet business needs, Citrix is advocating benefits of a single integration infrastructure and application centralisation to give organisations access to all that is required to support evolving business processes.

Although pursued in slightly different ways with different points of emphasis, I would argue that adaptability has become the industry`s watchword in delivering business value.

There appears to be a growing consensus that business success is directly related to the ability to adapt at the speed of change.

As with many recent innovations in the world of information technology, one can only wonder why is has taken so long for the players to see the light? The benefits of this new approach are so clear, why didn`t business demand the changes long ago?

I believe we can take heart in the SAP and Citrix shows that leading software developers are beginning to see the light. They are realising business is now in the driving seat and that their success depends on providing real solutions to real business needs.

In other words, the software development industry is finally getting real about software development, but there is still a long way to go.