Johannesburg, 24 Aug 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has fast-tracked digital transformation, but there are inherent dangers in placing all bets on new initiatives, warns Micro Focus.
The worldwide pandemic of 2020 has shone a glaring light on the need for innovation through digital transformation. The ability for organisations to be able to shift strategies and business models swiftly is now key to their future survival. For some, the pandemic has highlighted the lack of investment in key infrastructure and core, strategic applications, that has limited their ability to respond quickly to changing demands or the ongoing operational risk of the platform.
This is according to Neil Fowler, GM Application Modernisation and Connectivity at Micro Focus, who will speak at the upcoming Micro Focus Realize 2020 virtual customer forum in South Africa.
“The race is very much on to achieve digital aspirations quickly,” he says. “In pursuit of this, there is an increasing focus on cost and flexibility in consumption models, and efforts are under way across industries to harness innovative technology such as cloud platforms alongside more enterprise workload platforms.”
However, he says, there are inherent dangers in placing all strategic bets on “new initiatives” at the expense of incumbent business operations, and stories abound of failed transformation projects. “Small wonder perhaps that 70% of respondents in a recent poll commissioned by Micro Focus saw modernisation as the most viable option of meeting strategic need. Indeed, the same poll cited that 92% of respondents saw core business applications as 'strategic' to the organisation. Something to be protected, and leveraged,” Fowler says.
He notes that digital transformation has become a business imperative to address the combined business and technical risks by leveraging trusted, valued core systems and modernising applications, infrastructure and process with a balance of cost, risk and speed.
“In 2020, like never before, cost pressures, the imperative to deliver business outcomes predictably, and to get there quickly, are operational imperatives across entire industries and geographies. Plotting such aspirational journeys brings with it its own risks – which need managing carefully.”
Fowler highlights four key considerations in the transformation roadmap:
Risk. “Many organisations are unaware of the possibilities of application modernisation. There are many theoretical choices on the market each having different risks and implications,” he says. “On further examination, some solutions may have consequences of high initial investment, lengthy duration, platform or vendor lock-in, or a high-risk strategy of replacement or rewrite. These may be appropriate options for some applications in an enterprise portfolio, but for many others, the risk, cost and time to deliver is too great.”
Knowledge. Fowler says many enterprise applications were developed decades ago and in some cases the subject matter expertise of the operating platform or application has been lost. This is sometimes compounded by an environment that doesn’t provide a modern, productive set of tooling with a DevOps toolchain that makes it more difficult to hire and train new staff. “Developing in a contemporary IDE like Eclipse or Visual Studio with integrated access to application intelligence that can be part of an automated continuous integration system negates the application risk,” he says. “Modernising the infrastructure to Linux or Windows, either on-premises or cloud, means that you have access to a much wider pool of resources to maintain, develop and operate the applications.”
Digital interfaces. Application modernisation is an ongoing journey, a target state is simply what the present goal is, Fowler says. “Core business logic is typically stable but the way it is accessed and consumed changes with the advent of new client interfaces and technologies. Providing a flexible, extensible and scalable core application that can be accessed via APIs accelerates the deployment of new interfaces and applications. Ongoing refactoring and modernisation, maybe taking advantage of a Microservices architecture, while re-using tried and tested, reliable application logic provides the right balance of agility and transformation,” he says. Fowler adds that establishing appropriately secure connections for today’s range of devices and servers to provide clean and resilient digital connections is a further imperative.
Neil Fowler will deliver the opening address on day three of Micro Focus Realize 2020, on Core Business Modernisation Roadmaps. Micro Focus Realize gives you the opportunity to experience and discuss Micro Focus’ proven approach to Application Modernisation, which provides the options and capabilities to deliver smart, secure and cost-effective digital transformation. Our global cloud provider partners will help describe how the cloud can help accelerate these projects and open up new possibilities of leveraging new environments and technologies.
The Micro Focus Realize 2020 virtual customer forum will be staged in partnership with ITWeb on 15, 16 & 17 September. Click here for more information and to secure a place at this exciting event.
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