Partnering with the business is no longer good enough. In fact, it’s a dot-com era holdover, from when organizations first came to realize that the Internet and the Web in particular were strategic assets.
Digital transformation represents the next generation of change. Partnering with the business won’t cut it anymore.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
CIOs, Priorities, and the Life Sciences Industry
As an IT executive, this is the period in which my inbox is inundated with e-mails about CIO priorities for the new year. Many of these articles are insightful and can provoke some interesting and thoughtful discussions. Nevertheless, their one-size-fits-all approach can limit their usefulness.
Companies, like snowflakes, are unique. In this case, uniqueness is driven by many factors including:
- Industry
- Sub-Industry Focus
- Development state (startup, growth, downsizing)
- Operating status (pending sale, M&A, legal complications, etc.)
- Access to capital
- Talent base
Each of these factors can shift priorities, and collectively their impacts can be substantial.
Consequently, I view these yearly priority articles as generalized recommendations that may or may not be relevant in my circumstance. To be sure, the often contained points have great value, but as the old adage goes, your “mileage may vary.”
In recognition of these facts, I am going to take a different approach. Here, the focus will be on the Pharmaceuticals (Life Sciences) industry.
Within this broad area, there can still be hundreds of variations. Examples include “Big Pharma” versus “Specialty Pharma,” Brand-Name versus Generic, start-up versus established, vertically integrated versus virtual (partner) structured. You get the idea; there are lots of snowflakes.
So how does one develop a list of priorities given the blizzard of snowflakes filling the environment? The answer is to focus on the basics and frame the discussion around the classic paradigm of People-Process-Technology-Strategy. The goal will be to illuminate some fundamental drivers that have high applicability for Life Science companies.
Depending on your organization’s particular state, you might need to begin by identifying your organization’s key capabilities. Here capabilities are defined as the things an organization does particularly well driving meaningful business results. Examples can range from talent management, lean manufacturing, customer care, research, or product design. For pharmaceutical companies, some specific examples could be pipeline management, study design, regulatory management including submissions, responses, and related matters, and drug discovery.
The ability to understand and enumerate an organization’s core capabilities is essential both in general and for IT. It provides a clear and aligned roadmap for the organization, helping it understand what are critical investments and where they have gaps.
Ideally, the end result can be a roadmap which allows for well-timed and scoped investments throughout the organization. IT can leverage this map to support the business with agile IT solutions aligned to the business needs. Additional benefits include minimizing re-work and a clearer picture for future investment needs.
A five-step approach is outlined here for advancing this process.
The key steps are:
The next entry will focus on Step One and Two in this process.
If you would like to set up a conversation with Clint, please reach out.
By Clint Gilliam, Virtual CIO, GreenPages Technology Solutions
What is the point of hybrid cloud – or, is it time to re-evaluate hybrid?
(c)iStock.com/BrianAJackson
Opinion There used to be a buzz around hybrid cloud. The idea was simple, host your mission critical applications in-house where they were more secure and manageable and then burst into the cloud for additional capacity.
Sounds great; but in reality, it didn’t really work. Many organisations tried and while some succeeded most failed. Why? The primary issue was network latency between stacks but there was also a huge degree of complexity in orchestrating different technology platforms successfully.
As we enter a more mature DevOps focused world, is it time to re-evaluate hybrid? Particularly as containers make abstraction between environments less of an issue, perhaps we are at the point where the problems are easier to solve? While that is probably true, I believe there are a number of reasons why hybrid’s days are numbered.
Hybrid cloud was invented by companies who wanted to keep selling you servers, network devices and storage: Most organisations have come to the conclusion that cloud benefits (ROI, flexibility and commodity billing) far outweigh the investment required to run your own hardware estate. IT infrastructure is a commodity, why would you tie up capital in assets? Almost no amount of spin from manufacturers will change the view.
Let’s not forget one of the key promises of using the cloud – simplicity: Reducing complexity and improving management is one of the big wins cloud delivers. By adopting a hybrid approach, you are making things more complex. You have to test in multiple environments, often using different tools (not to mention separate costs) and build teams with a wider range of skills.
As businesses go on their cloud adoption journey and they migrate workloads, they will continue to sweat the remaining hardware assets as part of a legacy estate: While you might call this a hybrid approach, it’s actually a stepping stone to a cloud only environment. It is not a long-term strategy for infrastructure. Hybrid is now a mid-point to an ultimate goal.
As cloud consumption increases, so does overall market maturity: Barriers to entry are lowered and there are fewer risks. For example, the biggest concern used to be security, but an increasing number of enterprise products and a better understanding of solutions have proved you can be just as secure in the cloud. For every problem, there are more and more success stories which disprove the doubters.
The risk of not transforming your IT environments is now greater than the risk of doing nothing: In the past, your CTO was able to postpone a potentially risky migration project. However, the increased demands of the business to be more flexible and the governance required to prevent shadow IT means that IT departments who don’t own the cloud journey are at risk themselves.
The days of owning and operating servers are over. Even large enterprises who have traditionally run their own DC footprints are building migration processes and teams. While saving money plays an important part in this paradigm shift, the primary reason is business modernisation.
The executives who are transforming their organisations have realised that being agile and able to respond to threats from disruptors quickly, means flexible and scalable IT platforms. Why invest in building and running these if someone else has already done it? When you look at the investment in features, products and infrastructure which the top cloud services are making, only a small number of companies can match their budgets. What is more, infrastructure is rarely part of the core business.
But what about Azure stack and VMware on AWS, I hear you cry? Well, neither of those are currently available and while they might sound appealing in theory, I still believe owning hardware is an outdated investment. Unlike property, IT infrastructure assets don’t appreciate in value and the scale offered by a cloud service means we are past the tipping point.
What is the point of hybrid cloud – or, is it time to re-evaluate hybrid?
(c)iStock.com/BrianAJackson
Opinion There used to be a buzz around hybrid cloud. The idea was simple, host your mission critical applications in-house where they were more secure and manageable and then burst into the cloud for additional capacity.
Sounds great; but in reality, it didn’t really work. Many organisations tried and while some succeeded most failed. Why? The primary issue was network latency between stacks but there was also a huge degree of complexity in orchestrating different technology platforms successfully.
As we enter a more mature DevOps focused world, is it time to re-evaluate hybrid? Particularly as containers make abstraction between environments less of an issue, perhaps we are at the point where the problems are easier to solve? While that is probably true, I believe there are a number of reasons why hybrid’s days are numbered.
Hybrid cloud was invented by companies who wanted to keep selling you servers, network devices and storage: Most organisations have come to the conclusion that cloud benefits (ROI, flexibility and commodity billing) far outweigh the investment required to run your own hardware estate. IT infrastructure is a commodity, why would you tie up capital in assets? Almost no amount of spin from manufacturers will change the view.
Let’s not forget one of the key promises of using the cloud – simplicity: Reducing complexity and improving management is one of the big wins cloud delivers. By adopting a hybrid approach, you are making things more complex. You have to test in multiple environments, often using different tools (not to mention separate costs) and build teams with a wider range of skills.
As businesses go on their cloud adoption journey and they migrate workloads, they will continue to sweat the remaining hardware assets as part of a legacy estate: While you might call this a hybrid approach, it’s actually a stepping stone to a cloud only environment. It is not a long-term strategy for infrastructure. Hybrid is now a mid-point to an ultimate goal.
As cloud consumption increases, so does overall market maturity: Barriers to entry are lowered and there are fewer risks. For example, the biggest concern used to be security, but an increasing number of enterprise products and a better understanding of solutions have proved you can be just as secure in the cloud. For every problem, there are more and more success stories which disprove the doubters.
The risk of not transforming your IT environments is now greater than the risk of doing nothing: In the past, your CTO was able to postpone a potentially risky migration project. However, the increased demands of the business to be more flexible and the governance required to prevent shadow IT means that IT departments who don’t own the cloud journey are at risk themselves.
The days of owning and operating servers are over. Even large enterprises who have traditionally run their own DC footprints are building migration processes and teams. While saving money plays an important part in this paradigm shift, the primary reason is business modernisation.
The executives who are transforming their organisations have realised that being agile and able to respond to threats from disruptors quickly, means flexible and scalable IT platforms. Why invest in building and running these if someone else has already done it? When you look at the investment in features, products and infrastructure which the top cloud services are making, only a small number of companies can match their budgets. What is more, infrastructure is rarely part of the core business.
But what about Azure stack and VMware on AWS, I hear you cry? Well, neither of those are currently available and while they might sound appealing in theory, I still believe owning hardware is an outdated investment. Unlike property, IT infrastructure assets don’t appreciate in value and the scale offered by a cloud service means we are past the tipping point.
Nutanix, HPE and Cisco top 451 rankings for servers and converged infrastructure
(c)iStock.com/danleap
Nutanix is the leading vendor for converged infrastructure ahead of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco, while the latter two and Dell are jostling for prime position in the server space, according to a report from 451 Research.
The figures, which appear in the analyst firm’s most recent Voice of the Enterprise study, argues that server spending remains ‘steady’ despite enterprises continuing to move workloads to the cloud; almost half (49.4%) of those polled say they are undergoing IT transformation initiatives of some kind. Yet respondents also note that server vendors ‘could work to better understand customers’ business’.
Customers were asked to rate vendors prior to purchase – which 451 calls the ‘promise’ stage – and following implementation, or the ‘fulfilment’ stage. For x86 servers, Cisco outranked its competition in various attributes, including reputation, long-term viability, product performance, and technical innovation, yet was behind Dell and HPE in what might be the mitigating factor – cost.
For converged infrastructure (above), Nutanix was top of the tree by virtue of all bar one of its ‘fulfilment’ ratings exceeding its respective ‘promise’ rating. Other above average performers for ‘fulfilment’ were HPE, Cisco, Microsoft, and NetApp.
“There is a clear opportunity for server vendors to guide customers into next-generation technologies while preserving their current distribution of standard infrastructure,” said Christian Perry, 451 research manager. “As compute infrastructure choices expand beyond traditional servers, customers are more critical than ever about their x86 servers because they must provide a better ROI than competing x86 servers, cloud services and converged infrastructure.
“To seize this opportunity, vendors must work more closely with customers and prospects to understand current and future business requirements,” Perry added.
You can find out more about the report here (registration required).
Nutanix, HPE and Cisco top 451 rankings for servers and converged infrastructure
(c)iStock.com/danleap
Nutanix is the leading vendor for converged infrastructure ahead of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco, while the latter two and Dell are jostling for prime position in the server space, according to a report from 451 Research.
The figures, which appear in the analyst firm’s most recent Voice of the Enterprise study, argues that server spending remains ‘steady’ despite enterprises continuing to move workloads to the cloud; almost half (49.4%) of those polled say they are undergoing IT transformation initiatives of some kind. Yet respondents also note that server vendors ‘could work to better understand customers’ business’.
Customers were asked to rate vendors prior to purchase – which 451 calls the ‘promise’ stage – and following implementation, or the ‘fulfilment’ stage. For x86 servers, Cisco outranked its competition in various attributes, including reputation, long-term viability, product performance, and technical innovation, yet was behind Dell and HPE in what might be the mitigating factor – cost.
For converged infrastructure, Nutanix was top of the tree by virtue of all bar one of its ‘fulfilment’ ratings exceeding its respective ‘promise’ rating. Other above average performers for ‘fulfilment’ were HPE, Cisco, Microsoft, and NetApp.
“There is a clear opportunity for server vendors to guide customers into next-generation technologies while preserving their current distribution of standard infrastructure,” said Christian Perry, 451 research manager. “As compute infrastructure choices expand beyond traditional servers, customers are more critical than ever about their x86 servers because they must provide a better ROI than competing x86 servers, cloud services and converged infrastructure.
“To seize this opportunity, vendors must work more closely with customers and prospects to understand current and future business requirements,” Perry added.
You can find out more about the report here (registration required).
Monitoring in the #Microservices Age | @DevOpsSummit #APM #Monitoring
Thanks to Docker and the DevOps revolution, microservices have emerged as the new way to build and deploy applications — and there are plenty of great reasons to embrace the microservices trend. If you are going to adopt microservices, you also have to understand that microservice architectures have many moving parts. When it comes to incident management, this presents an important difference between microservices and monolithic architectures. More moving parts mean more complexity to monitor and manage in order to keep applications and infrastructure healthy and running.
[session] If #IoT Is the Meteor, Is #OT the Dinosaur? | @ThingsExpo @Cisco #AI
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Sudarshan Krishnamurthi, a Senior Manager, Business Strategy, at Cisco Systems, will discuss how IT and operational technology (OT) work together, as opposed to being in separate siloes as once was traditional. Attendees will learn how to fully leverage the power of IoT in their organization by bringing the two sides together and bridging the communication gap. He will also look at what good leadership must entail in order to accomplish this, and how IT managers can be the drivers of change within their organizations. He also will discuss the skill sets needed to ensure that the full power of the IoT can be harnessed.
Announcing @IoTNow_ “Media Sponsor” of @ThingsExpo | #IoT #M2M #AI
SYS-CON Events announced today that IoT Now has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6–8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. IoT Now explores the evolving opportunities and challenges facing CSPs, and it passes on some lessons learned from those who have taken the first steps in next-gen IoT services.
[session] Interactive Analytics in the Financial Industry By @KineticaDB | @CloudExpo #AI #BI #FinTech
The financial services market is one of the most data-driven industries in the world, yet it’s bogged down by legacy CPU technologies that simply can’t keep up with the task of querying and visualizing billions of records.
In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Jared Parker, Director of Financial Services at Kinetica, will discuss how the advent of advanced in-database analytics on the GPU makes it possible to run sophisticated data science workloads on the same database that is housing the rich information needed to drive trading decisions. With the unique multi-core architecture of the GPU, financial computations can be processed efficiently and quickly, making it ideal for financial services streaming datasets. He will share how several financial institutions’ quantitative science groups are specifically using GPUs to accelerate analytics, deep learning/machine learning, and converging AI and BI.