Creating Your Digital Strategy

Stateless Computing

By G C Network | August 15, 2008

A few days ago I read a review of Merrill Lynch’s Jeffrey Birnbaum LinuxWorld keynote on stateless computing. “With stateless computing, users’ settings and data are automatically saved to the…

Cloud Services

By G C Network | August 14, 2008

38% of 456 business technology professionals in a Information Week survey indicated that they currently use or will consider using services from a cloud provider. This seems much betterthan the…

Amazon, Elastra and the New Enterprise Data Center

By G C Network | August 13, 2008

Last week Amazon made an investment into Elastra. Some see this as Amazon’s enterprise play. Others see it as move towards the viability of private clouds. I see it as…

Microsoft Midori

By G C Network | August 12, 2008

Last week word got out that Microsoft’s new research project codenamed Midori. According to Information Week “the Midori system is being called Microsoft’s first cloud-based OS, and it could one…

Dell Trademarking Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 11, 2008

There has been quite a bit of chatter lately over Dell’s attempt to patent “cloud computing”. Last week, the US Patent and Trade Office put an end to those aspirations…

Rob Enderle Cautions on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 8, 2008

Words of caution from Rob Enderle in “The Real Truth and Technology and IT”: “The key to success in the cloud will be keeping solutions simple, plus understanding and mitigating…

3 Important Point for Federal Government Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 7, 2008

Point 1: In May, Verizon and AT&T were awarded a DHS task order for just under $1B to provide telecommunications services to the department. Verizon won the lead provider’s spot…

A Cloud Methodology

By G C Network | August 7, 2008

Although this was published in June, I just saw it and felt it was to good not to repeat: A Methodology for Cloud Computing Architecture Peel off the applications individually,…

IBM Invests Nearly $400M on Cloud Computing Centers

By G C Network | August 6, 2008

In a press release last week, IBM says that it will spend $360 million to build its most sophisticated, state-of-the-art data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park (RTP),…

Cloud Computing and the NCOIC

By G C Network | August 5, 2008

According to their website, The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) has scheduled a session on cloud computing at their upcoming plenary session in September. In case you haven’t heard…

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For many corporations, welcoming the New Year also heralds the season of strategy development and budget distribution. This year, however, companies of all sizes are struggling with how to deal with the accelerating consumerization of technology and the mind numbing societal changes it brings. While each industry vertical has its own processes and business models to deal with, they all share a pressing need to develop an appropriate digital strategy. For 2017 this seems to be at the top of every executive to do list.

Business strategy experts around the world have categorically stated that data is now a strategic asset that can be sold and exchanged. In order to identify important data and manage it in a digitally driven future, companies will need to evaluate their organization’s structure, go-to-market approach, and overall corporate identity. Accomplishing this task effectively requires these companies to first establish their role within the new data economy.  To do this, IBM experts have created the Data Economy Framework which is used to characterize companies, their roles, capabilities, and overall trends in how they act in the data-driven digital economy. Specifically, will your company become a:

  • Data Producer – generate data from IoT and traditional big data sources (i.e. business applications, social media, websites, open sources, financial transactions, surveys, censuses, and digitized hard copies);
  • Data Aggregator/Custodian – provide data normalization services that enables data collection from heterogeneous devices and efficient data distribution; 
  • Platform Owner – provide application programming interfaces (APIs) for connectivity and ecosystem device discovery; 
  • Insight Provider – design and development of the semantic models, analytics libraries and machine learning techniques necessary for taking efficient and effective action based on data; or 
  • Data Presenter – make complex and large datasets easy for business users to consume. They also allow consumers to have intuitive access to the underlying data and its derivatives.

Once you have settle on yourdesired role, experts offer up four strategic pillars that must be addressed when executing on a corporate digital strategy:

  • Executing processes on a resilient digital platform that’s secure, available on demand and easy to set up and use; 
  • Offering anytime, anywhere digital insights, driven by analytics; 
  • Creating a digital workforce platform of connected workers, using advanced monitoring, search and analytics tools; and 
  • Proactively managing a digital innovation ecosystem comprising multiple partners to incorporate the latest technologies.

Digital transformation will also require reconfiguring both your corporate front and back office operations for digital executionMicroservices and serverless computing are at the heart of this process. Serverless computing, also known as Function as a Service (FaaS), is a cloud computing code execution model in which the cloud provider fully manages starting and stopping virtual machines as necessary to serve requests Requests are billed by an abstract measure of the resources required to satisfy the request, rather than per virtual machine hour. One of the leading serverless computing options is IBM’s OpenWhisk. It uses business rules to bind events, triggers, and actions to each other. OpenWhisk actions run automatically only when needed. Its servlerless architecture is quickly instantiated with the scalability needed to meet the evolving demands of the modern user.
Microservices is a service-oriented architectures (SOA) specialization used to build flexible, independently deployable software systems. “Services” in a microservice architecture (MSA) are processes that communicate with each other over a network in order to fulfill a business goal. These services also use technology-agnostic protocols. This option represents a modern approach to software architecture for systems where continuous integration and DevOps are practiced. In its core, the microservice architecture advocates partitioning large monolithic applications into smaller independent services that communicate with each other by using HTTP and messages. The architecture pattern is a child of the continuous integration revolution and is designed for deployments that use a DevOps-based continuous delivery model.

 

In summary, developing a new digital strategy for you company requires you to:

  1. Select the right digital economy role for your company’s business future; 
  2. Design implementation steps that align with the four strategic pillars of digital strategy execution; and 
  3. Reconfiguring corporate front and back office operations in ways that take advantage of microservices and serverless computing.
Make 2017 the year your company creates its digitally driven future.


This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.com.

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