By Michael Allen *
Organizations are on a track of continuous innovation. As the world goes digital, customer expectations for new experiences, services and features have increased exponentially. The clearest examples of this are seen in the annual smartphone cycles or even in the app updates we receive daily. The need to provide the best and the latest has become an issue for any and all companies - that's why Amazon launches new programs every 11 seconds to meet consumer demands or resolve market pressures. This model is also followed by modern companies that seek to transform themselves digitally to create a competitive advantage for their offerings.
However, visualizing digital transformation as the ultimate goal of a journey can be a major challenge for organizations, as was the case with Kodak and Blockbuster when they took their foot off the accelerator. As digital transformation projects reach what appears to be their final destination, companies become more vulnerable to “digital native” competitors, who are constantly pushing the limits and looking at how they can surprise the market with something new. Therefore, companies should change the way they see transformation, treating it as a constant activity and not just as a final goal. Having innovation present in all activities allows companies to constantly evolve, as well as adapting to new market movements that may arise at any time.
To achieve full innovation, organizations should move beyond static infrastructure, reinforcing the migration to Cloud computing seen in recent years. Having a hybrid and more dynamic IT environment is crucial to drive continuous delivery of new products and services, as constant innovation requires a flexible and scalable technology ecosystem that can keep pace with change. Native Cloud architectures built with microservices and containers promote faster development and implementation processes. This provides companies with the foundation to enable continuous innovation at the speed that customers demand.
On the other hand, the complexity created by Hybrid Cloud-based ecosystems can be problematic for technology teams, which lack the visibility to identify the root cause of some performance problems that can affect end users. Therefore, the tendency is that more and more organizations adopt Artificial Intelligence resources to help their teams to act more quickly and assertively in the face of eventual problems, or possible interruptions that may have an impact on corporate performance.
Technology is fundamental to help companies in their digital journeys and in the automatic correction of systems. But moving to Cloud environments is only half the battle - just because organizations have a more dynamic technology ecosystem, that doesn't mean they become agile overnight. Once organizations have full end-to-end visibility of their Hybrid Cloud networks, they must seek to change the mindset of IT teams to create a more agile and dynamic culture.
This change in mentality can be achieved with the adoption of DevOps, which allows organizations to achieve a more agile collaborative culture, breaking the silos in which development and operations teams work. This creates an environment in which each team works towards shared and specific goals. For companies looking to achieve continuous innovation, DevOps must become more than just a cultural norm for IT teams. Instead, it must be seen as a crucial component in the way the company operates.
A DevOps culture helps organizations become more confident in their code, with different teams working together to ensure that everything works within the parameters set for the customer experience. To achieve this, however, DevOps teams need complete visibility into the impact of their code on the performance of the network as a whole. The collaborative culture means that everyone has access to these ideas, ensuring that the entire team is working from a single source of business truth.
Organizations can take this further with BizDevOps, making innovation positive for business success and integrating experts from different fields to create a digital ecosystem that surprises consumers in two days of buying and interacting with brands through through its electronic channels. This establishes a deeper, organizational focus on innovation and ensures that everyone is working together to improve the organization's ability to meet the needs of its customers.
Creating a more dynamic IT environment and agile ways of working in a company can help business teams find new ways to solve their challenges, driving innovation and truly improving their customers' experience. In an era of constant change, the need for continuous innovation is greater than ever, requiring companies to seek a competitive advantage over competitors.
With Cloud applications, hybrid environments, dynamic structure and a new look at business, innovations will emerge quickly and assertively. The change in mentality, combining new tools and systems with a complete overhaul of the way an organization operates, will create differentiated technical and operational environments. The journey may seem difficult, but the technology is now available to automatically bring about the necessary changes. Undoubtedly, companies that will succeed in the future are already choosing the right path for their new journey today.
* Michael Allen, VP Worldwide Partners at Dynatrace
Warning: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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