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Do the math: your new enterprise technology may be a decade old

The process of researching, requisitioning, purchasing, installing and testing software still takes years. This needs to be short-circuited (but in a good way).
Written by Joe McKendrick, Contributing Writer

A few years ago, the process of building and deploying enterprise applications would extend over a period of months. In recent years, that expectation has shrunk to weeks, if not days. Now, in many cases, solutions are expected within a matter of hours.  If you're in an enterprise with well-established but lengthy processes and procedures for specifying, designing, developing, testing applications, what would it take to move to this more hyper-speed state of things?

Jeff-Lawson-photo from Twilio website cropped 2
Jeff Lawson, CEO, Twilio, Photo: Twilio

Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio and a veteran of Amazon Web Services, has a few ideas on this. He has been studying the application development workflow for some time now, and points out that many applications are even more outdated than one may think. Lawson recently shared some of his observations on the challenges for IT leaders in the age of “now.”

Take the typical corporate call center, he illustrates. “The buying and implementation cycle on traditional call center hardware is often two years,” Lawson relates. “With a two-year buying and implementation cycle, the call center you needed in 2006 and finally got up and running in 2008, was likely written three years before, based on an product architecture designed three to five years prior to that. So doing the math, your new call center - is actually built on decade-old technology. And you’re only halfway through its amortization cycle.”

That's all well and fine – unless your competitors have discovered other ways to upgrade their technology faster. “In the time you’ve spent building out a call center, your competition built one in the cloud in a few weeks and has been focusing on enhancing their customer’s experience rather than deploying hardware,” says Lawson. “They win.”

Lawson is an advocate of the cloud and software-defined approaches as tools for business agility, noting that it provides a way to stay ahead with the latest technology developments – and more. “No matter what the area, those who look to software solutions will outmaneuver those who look to monolithic platforms,” says Lawson. “Among benefits such as rapid procurement, scalability and cost savings, the cloud and software let you adapt quickly to address business challenges and customer demands.”

Contrast that to “the servers in your closet where maintenance and customization is often achieved through costly professional services and cannot easily adapt to business's changing needs,” he continues. “As customizations mount in both expense and complexity, you’ve created a one-of-a kind solution that’s difficult to upgrade and improve and finding support is even more challenging because the guy who built it left your company three years ago. This giant and costly monolith is holding back both you and your business from solving real business needs.”

By contrast, he points out, cloud and software-defined solutions “are getting better and more advanced every day because they are updated constantly - often on a daily basis.”

The good news is that today's cloud solutions can easily be adapted or integrated into existing IT infrastructures – even those heavily leveraged with legacy assets. Lawson advises that enterprises start their cloud journey by “bridging the gap between existing on-premise resources and cloud-based solutions. Enterprises are finding that they can augment existing infrastructure and plug into cloud-based services to support their legacy hardware and to quickly innovate and extend capacity.  Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, make it easy for enterprises to access a wide range of capabilities.”

All it takes is experience, he continues. “As companies gain experience with running software and cloud-based solutions, they begin moving more and more of their operations to these more agile solutions.”

The key is to move gradually, step by step, into the cloud. A good place to start is solutions that are naturally suited for the cloud.  For example, Lawson explains, “applications that can be easily augmented by leveraging cloud resources - those that can benefit from rapid scalability, both up and down, are a good first option.” The key point, he says, is, “don’t try to force-fit an application into the cloud. Choose a few, gain familiarity and get going.  Don’t wait to be 'all in.'”

Let your IT staff  the opportunity to experiment and prototype solutions using cloud and software-based solutions, he adds. “I am constantly amazed by what developers and IT departments can build when they are encouraged to use software-based solutions to solve business needs. I’m sure you will be too.” 

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