Transforming to newer frontiers at HP Discover with fellow bloggers
I looked forward to hosting my first blogger Coffee Talk at HP Discover. I was eager when I chose the topic of Transforming Applications to new Frontiers. As I outlined in an introductory post, over the years, Applications Transformation methodology has reached a steady state. But today we are in a world where there are several more options available to us, and we need to synthesize those in a systemic manner. So, what is different about Applications Transformation going forward? This set the stage for the discussion.
First, I must acknowledge the bloggers who participated. Many thanks to Hans De Leenheer, Big Data, Luigi Tiano, Ernesto Pellegrino, Andrea Cummins, Robin Harris, @renebuest, Sam Johnston, Chris Wahl, Patrick Husband, Martin Mcleod, Fabio Rapposelli, Ben Kepes, Paul Miller. If you are interested in the new style of IT—and are not already following these bloggers—I highly recommend their work.
After I set the context for the informal discussion, the first few questions were raised around HP's positioning of its cloud solutions. I was a bit surprised, but we carried on. I had intended this to be a discussion about the industry in general rather than a specific vendor's positioning of its solutions—including HP. In retrospect, the entire Coffee Talk could have been a mixed bag of the industry observations in general with specific discussion points around HP—something I look forward to doing the next time around.
Here are some summary points from the spirited discussion:
- There are several market-changing forces—including the consumerization of IT, cloud and BYOD—that have driven a change in the role of IT in general and the CIO in particular.
- There is an increased need for IT services and solutions to be driven by the business and the consumer-driven market to the extent that the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) is likely to make more strategic decisions in 2020 than the CIO.
- That being said, the CIO still needs to provide the strategic overview across the enterprise and strike a balance by working with the CFO to cut costs and deliver on user satisfaction and expectations.
- The functionality of applications and the manner in which that functionality is delivered needs to come from the business. Perhaps the CIO should be characterized as the Chief Officer for Information, which highlights the criticality of this role to ensure that business gets the right information at the right time.
- BYOD has also had a disruptive impact, both through its pervasive presence, and by extending the available channels for accessing applications. This increases the risk of the data exchanged being compromised in addition to impacting the cost structure. In other words: using your personal devices at your own cost for accessing enterprise resources is risky and costly.
- Mergers and acquisitions have resulted in a proliferation of legacy applications with data that must be migrated synthetically to maximize its value to obtain a higher Return on Information.
It was a great experience. I felt like I was in a Twitter Chat except the tweets were verbal!
How about you? What thoughts come to your mind as it relates to transforming applications? What are your observations on the thoughts summarized above? Please let me know.
Wishing all the bloggers who attended the Coffee Talk a very happy holiday and a joyous New Year.
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