CIOInsider India Magazine
Democratization Of Technology
A Technology Leader & Author of 'Clinch the Deal – Negotiation strategies to get what you want’
This article focuses on the “need for plumbing” – which is becoming a myth today with all the developmental changes an organization is faced it. In my prior articles I have talked about having clarity of thought when it comes to “need”. I have always believed solutions are easy if we clearly know what the “problem statement” is.
Technology change and adaptations to these changes are very crucial for an organization to survive in this fast-fluctuating world. The discussion in this topic remains around the cost and impact of the change. Open thinking, thinking outside the box, free thinking, thinking big, doing things differently, think only growth, are all awesome to hear; in-fact organizations should be thinking “change” all the time – with a caviar in mind – is your organization built to be ready for change?
When I was being asked to author an article on how to cope up with change, or cope with growth – a perfect example that I wanted to start the topic with is “Bangalore”. The Silicon Valley of India, a city in the southern part of India grown out of proportion where the distance is now not measured in kilometers or miles but in hours. Every multinational organization one can think of has an office in Bangalore, but the readiness in infrastructure needed to support the growth has completely being missed in the planning stage; probably we can call out that there was no planning phase in the growth of the city. The planning which should have been done 10 years ago has started now, where a lot of catch-up is needed. This will definitely take much longer to stabilize as we are dealing with moving targets. These examples only highlight infrastructure readiness; the “hygiene” is completely compromised too. Similar scenarios exist in an organization that is rapidly planning to grow. The hygiene gets missed and the result - “chocking” the ability to grow.
Knowing your architecture landscape is really important. If the “pipe is chocked” the water would
not flow, & if the “plumbing” is not done right the water will gush out from the wrong places hampering growth. The city of Bangalore has become “Banga-lore” which is now almost on its knees, crawling, crippling, adding un-necessary stress to the inhabitants. “Plumbing” for the organizations is the interconnection between your business landscape, enterprise architecture, application functionality, Data landscape, Hyperconverged Infrastructure, IoT, cyber security, visualization, User Experience, AI, Automation & the virtual or physical setup used to manage them all is well oiled and scaled to cope with the change which the organization is preparing for.
Please read the next line very carefully, the pun is completely intended. Stop & think for a minute what would happen when one has no place available to communicate? One tries to cut corners, becomes rash while driving, ignore the potholes, abuses becomes a normal effect, frustration adds to the culture, growth goes for a toss.
Funding for architecture has been pain over the years and now the discussion is even different, if the technology changes on an exponential pattern why should organization invest in architecture or building a landscape
A proper use of Enterprise architectural frameworks like The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) or Zackman framework or US Department of Defense Architecture framework (DODAF) or Federal Enterprise Architecure Framework which helps navigate the business architecture to information architecture to Information systems architecture to data architecture to delivery systems architecture including hardware, software, communications, Application Protocol Interfaces (API), can enable an organization be prepared well for current and upcoming technology changes. Architecture and its power to enable are highly neglected when it comes to organization planning. Very few organizations really invest well and plan the landscape according to business growth.
A deep study of architecture involves how the environments (internal and external) an organization operates in ties back to the business layer including strategy of the organization needed for growth. The business layer in turn ties to data and information systems layers which sits on top of the actual technology layer. All of this working in tandem providing simple but elegant user experience is what will truly prepare an organization for true growth. In this article, we will not get into the techniques for business planning; we leave that for some other time. The key is to use the levers of managing and preparing for technology change as a part of your business plan. Funding for architecture has been pain over the years and now the discussion is even different, if the technology changes on an exponential pattern why should organization invest in architecture or building a landscape.
Taking the study further, if we look at the “patterns of change” organizations are dealing with it will be clear “as mud” that there is no silver bullet which will prepare any organization to cope up with the democratized state of technology we are dealing with. In the mist of all this if an organization does not have a good handle on the current state, more of knowing the reality of where it is, the changes that they try to cope up with will come in as absolute nightmares not only impacting the real growth, the organization will have to continue earmarking its quotient around “health of hygiene” as a road block to growth.
