Today, every business is a software business, and in this new reality, agility is the key phrase - and crucial element - in the drive for digital transformation in all industries. To quote an article in the Wall Street Journal, Hewlett-Packard board member and LinkedIn investor, Marc Andreessen, explained why "software is eating the world"*.
Who makes use of the application economy and why is it important to the South African market?
A 2013 report by the Mobile Ecosystem Forum revealed that worldwide, 65% of mobile media users purchased goods or services using their mobile devices. The study, based on data from a survey of 10 000 consumers in 13 countries, found Kenyans were most likely to have made purchases with their mobile devices in 2013 (97% did so), followed by South Africans (94%) in the number two position globally.
These are staggering statistics that are already almost two years old.
So new business models are emerging and the commercial world is racing to develop omni-channels to ensure they reach all customers across all channels of business in a consistent manner. The need is to capture all that data and mine it, so even more value can be derived from and delivered to customers.
But, these new, agile infrastructures with increased velocity, volume and variety of application changes, pose challenges for technology teams. IT operations teams are being called on to deploy more innovative services in more dynamic environments, quicker than ever before, all while ensuring amazing customer experiences.
IT agility is a crucial element in the drive for success and competitive advantage. New applications and business services - as well as the new infrastructure necessary to support them - are now deployed at an incredibly rapid rate and with increased customisation. Requirements fluctuate, as they are driven by an ever-changing business landscape. Traditional services were offered with the goals of predictability, reliability and stability. These goals are more important than ever now and will be more difficult to retain in the new agile software-defined environment.
Be careful what you wish for
However much agility is desired and crucial, it comes with challenges, the main one being predictability, and with it, stability. Without both, chaos reigns supreme.
Managing the software-defined world is vital. The transition to highly agile environments is progressing rapidly. Therefore, infrastructure management solutions must offer a management ability in multi-vendor deployments.
IT agility is a crucial element in the drive for success and competitive advantage.
For the foreseeable future, infrastructure management solutions must manage all equipment and services seamlessly with the emerging agile environments.
One of the biggest challenges of embracing emerging technologies is knowing where to start.
The wood for the trees
In addition to a dynamic network, landscape and scale are increasing rapidly. One element of the application economy is an exponential growth in users interacting with organisations via mobile access and applications. Web-scale computing is no longer confined to the major consumer Web sites such as Google, Amazon and eBay, but affects nearly all organisations that interact with customers via mobile devices.
The Internet of things (IOT) will increase the number of manageable objects by an order of magnitude in the near future. Networks of the future will be expected to handle unprecedented amounts of data in real-time from an enormous variety of sources. These data sources will include all of the traditional IT devices, as well as health sensors, home and traffic automation, and municipal resource monitoring, to name just a few. The requirements of Web-scale computing and IOT is set to become "agility at scale".
Bottom line
These are some of the technology trends affecting users now and into the short-term future. These trends - both disruptive and innovative - are consolidating around digital transformation and created through software.
The fact is SA is not a laggard in this transformation, but is in fact leading, especially in mobile commerce.
Networks are changing dramatically and quickly, and these changes demand a new generation of infrastructure management tools, approaches and standards. These new tools must be agile, available in real-time and proactive.
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