Creating Your Digital Strategy

Cloud Computing on CNBC – $100B market

By G C Network | May 28, 2008

Google’s Head In The Clouds Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

IBM Blue Cloud

By G C Network | May 28, 2008

A short news interview on the IBM Blue Cloud . Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

Amazon’s Cloud Overtakes Websites

By G C Network | May 27, 2008

May 27, 2008 See NY Times article, Cloud Computing: So You Don’t Have to Stand Still Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

May 1 IBM, Google Partnership Announcement

By G C Network | May 27, 2008

In this video, IBM and Google announce their joint cloud computing initiative. As I said in my earlier post, Google and IBM have teamed up to provide a “Google-like” infrastructure.…

“The Missing Piece in Cloud Computing”

By G C Network | May 27, 2008

First Software as a Service – SaaS…Then Hardware as a Service – HaaS…Now, Middleware as a Service – MaaS? GigaSpaces’ CMO Geva Perry will be presenting on middleware virtualization at…

How the NRO can leverage Cloud Computing

By G C Network | May 26, 2008

Last Thursday, May 22nd, I had the pleasure of attending an Intelligence Community Executive Forum hosted by Carahsoft. The topic of this forum was “”Innovative Technology for the Intelligence Enterprise”.…

Green Cloud Computing

By G C Network | May 26, 2008

The other day I was asked “Why is cloud computing considered green?” Wouldn’t you know, The Economist provided the perfect answer. “In future the geography of the cloud is likely…

Oracle in the Cloud

By G C Network | May 25, 2008

Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) is building new data centers to support cloud computing. The company is investing $285M and will break ground on the 200,000-square-foot facility this summer. Oracle’s president Safra…

Explaining Cloud Computing

By G C Network | May 23, 2008

In the video Explaining Cloud Computing Christopher Barnatt, author of ExplainingComputers.com, and Associate Professor of Computing and Organizations in Nottingham University Business School, provides a very understandable explaination of cloud…

Cloud Computing supports Net-Centric Warfare

By G C Network | May 23, 2008

Netcentric warfare theory contains the following four tenets in its hypotheses: 1) A robustly networked force improves information sharing;2) Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness;3)…

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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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