WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Even before congested ports and parts and labor shortages began to snarl supply chains in 2020, companies needed to update their supply-chain technology. They haven’t done themselves any favors by clinging to manual systems and antiquated software, including one widely used application that’s so old the provider will soon stop supporting it.

The post-pandemic workplace continues to shift and requires collaboration between remote workers and office workers. Digital transformation has accelerated across every organization and CIOs must maneuver to keep pace. Customer expectations have shifted, and spending habits are moving away from in-person activities to online. IT must improve its maturity in key capabilities to maintain relevance in the organization.

The ERP for product-centric enterprises market is accelerating its transition to cloud deployment models. ERP application leaders should use this Magic Quadrant to evaluate cloud ERP application suites as part of a composable ERP strategy.

Focusing on business processes can lead companies to end up with multiple systems that perform similar functions, such as customer-relationship management. Concentrating too much on technology can cause EA teams to organize their work around building applications rather than enabling the business.

In our 35-criterion evaluation of enterprise architecture management suites (EAMS) providers, we identified the 12 most significant ones — Ardoq, Atoll Technologies, Avolution, BiZZdesign, BOC Group, LeanIX, MEGA International, Orbus Software, Planview, QPR Software, Software AG, and UNICOM Systems — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps enterprise architecture (EA) professionals select the right one for their needs.

IT operations teams struggle to maintain service quality when they apply legacy approaches to monitoring. Infrastructure and operations leaders responsible for monitoring should take the steps outlined here to increase their effectiveness and limit their exposure to challenges raised by the cloud.

Digitalization is now going mainstream. For example, the Economist has devoted a full issue to it.  “Whether you are going for a run, watching TV or even just sitting in traffic, virtually every activity creates a digital trace—more raw material for the data distilleries. Meanwhile, artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques such as Machine Learning extract more value from data. Algorithms can predict when a customer is ready to buy, a jet-engine needs servicing or a person is at risk of a disease.”

Application leaders engaged in digital transformation must include event-driven computing in their portfolio of skills and technology, including the key related responsibilities for event brokering and event stream analytics.

What do an iPaaS, an event-driven architecture and an advanced event broker have in common?

They’re probably all critical to the success of your enterprises’ digital transformation.

Read this paper to learn how you can leverage these tools in unison, to integrate your new and old technologies with modern frameworks and design patterns, and enable real-time event-distribution across all your environments and geos.

Digital transformations are, by their very nature, complex. There are multiple moving parts, integrated processes and technologies, and the need for expertise that cannot already be found in the company. In most firms, however, there is a small cadre of technology professionals who can impose relative order on the proceedings. CEOs and CIOs should consider the benefits of pulling enterprise architects closer to the center: bringing them to the table with business leaders, devising metrics that reveal the value of their work, and creating the type of incentives that will challenge them and prompt them to stay for the long term. Such an approach is critical not just for limiting risk and protecting against the potential challenges and downsides of digital transformations but also for ensuring a clear upside—a close and lasting partnership between the business and IT.

Last month’s story about organizations exposing passwords and other sensitive data via collaborative online spaces at Trello.com only scratched the surface of the problem. A deeper dive suggests a large number of government agencies, marketing firms, healthcare organizations and IT support companies are publishing credentials via public Trello boards that quickly get indexed by the major search engines.

Some IT leaders are growing weary of the phrase “digital transformation.” Find here 10 articles on the subject to help grasp some wisdom:

1. How Landauer CIO built a revenue-generating mindset in IT

2. SunTrust CIO's formula for speed relies on cloud, DevOps

3. Increasing IT’s speed: 3 levers CIOs can use

4. Teaching IT to embrace change: 9 execs share advice

5. Matson CIO: The most painful, gut-wrenching part of leading transformation

6. How hybrid cloud aids digital transformation

7. Budgeting smarts for digital transformation: 4 tips

8. Digital transformation: 3 strategies to manage change

9. Digital transformation: 5 principles for the retail industry

10. What absolutely won’t work when it comes to digital transformation

CIO Desk Reference is the world's best source for thought leadership articles, tools, and practical advice for CIOs, and IT Managers. It includes sections on the following topics:

1. IT Strategy
2. e-Strategy
3. IT Governance
4. Enterprise Architecture
5. IT Sourcing
6. IT Operations
7. CIO Career
8. CIO News

5 key recommendations

1. Don’t reject BYOD — be prepared for it. Give your IT administrators actionable data on device ownership and health that can inform risk-based access control decisions.
2. Encourage safe computing practices and good security hygiene, such as running regular security updates or using device encryption, passcodes and additional authentication to protect systems and data.
3. Configure systems and deploy policies that enable automatic updates for as much software as possible to remove some of the friction that users feel when manually installing updates. We found that an overwhelming number of out-of-date browsers and systems don’t take basic steps like enabling automatic updates.
4. Switch to browser platforms that update more frequently and automatically, like Google Chrome.
5. Disable Java and prevent Flash from running automatically on corporate devices, and enforce this on user-owned devices through endpoint access policies and controls.

Furthermore, we are introducing TechnoVision 2014 to you in a gradual, stepwise way. To be more precise, we are releasing a building block every working day, ever since Monday the 4th of November. Each building block is described through a separate blog post on the CTO Blog with many contributions of Capgemini’s leading technology experts. By the end of December you should  be equipped with at least 37 interesting perspectives on the way technology will shape business change in the forthcoming year.