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Category: Promo

  • Step Aside, Monoliths: Meet the Composable Enterprise

    Step Aside, Monoliths: Meet the Composable Enterprise

    A composable enterprise, defined by Gartner as “an organization that delivers business outcomes and adapts to the pace of business change”, relies on the assembly of interchangeable application building blocks. This architectural overhaul has largely been driven by a demand for more configurable application experiences, and the need to evolve existing application portfolios that are often too risky and costly to replace.

    New business opportunities require agility from application portfolios; however, many enterprises are still limited in their ability to adapt. Why? They rely on monolithic ERP systems and cumbersome legacy applications with static processes and haphazard structures. A modular setup can enable a business to rearrange as required depending on external or internal factors, such as shifts in consumer attitudes or sudden supply chain disruptions. Organizations are experiencing these shifts now and require a new approach to enterprise applications to be able to adapt. 

    Bridge the CX Gap with Greater Composability

    A composability approach is the best way to capture all the advantages of modern enterprise software. According to a recent Boomi report, by 2023 organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace the competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation. This shift requires enterprises to rethink how they architect their operations, harness a combination of packaged functions and technologies and successfully deliver seamless moments of service to their customers.

    There are three key ways that businesses can make the composability shift:

    • Adopting a service mindset
    • Scaling the delivery of microservices
    • Packaging business capabilities using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). 

    1. Designing for Service: Compete on Outcomes, not on Products 

    A composable enterprise whose portfolio is made up of heterogeneous applications from a palette of best-of-breed solutions allows organizations to address key inflection points throughout every customer, product or service lifecycle.

    As more consumers demand continuous value and reliability throughout an asset’s lifetime, businesses must shift to selling outcomes and experiences instead of products to meet these new expectations for quality service. This requires each part of an operation to align, not around immediate sales or revenue, but around delivering a quality Moment of Service™ — the inflection point where everything comes together to create better value and outcomes for customers. 

    Moving to a servitized model requires a composable stack to deliver services to order. At a systems level, this transformation requires organizations to adapt applications dynamically and deliver positive customer experiences with effective quality management, customer support, and access to complete information about the service offering. Unlike traditional enterprise software, this involves connecting data and applications that have often sat in separate silos. A composable enterprise can provide a service-orientated architecture, that enables businesses to become outcome-based and ready to quickly adapt to future disruptions. 

    2. Scale Component-based Architecture with Microservices

    If applications are built as loosely coupled services, then companies can employ a composable architecture to capitalize on independently deployable modules that are organized around business capabilities. This allows organizations to swap modules in and out, to suit emergent needs and build a well-structured best-fit solution for their unique business. 

    In contrast to a monolithic architecture, businesses can easily add resources to the most needed microservice rather than having to scale the entire application as demand for an application increases. In practice, this allows businesses to simplify customizable workflows and optimize business processes while leveraging and applying tools such as robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, or the plethora of hyper-automation capabilities available today.

    3. Embrace Open-ended APIs to Maximize Data-sharing Capabilities

    Packaged business capabilities (PBC) assembled using APIs are the foundation of every composable enterprise. They are used by businesses to secure data across cloud services, business systems and mobile applications. Historically, APIs have been used in monolithic applications to exchange data between the entire application and external applications and services. In composable software, APIs exchange data from individual modules to external applications and within the application — from module to module. This has significant implications for how systems are designed and built.

    APIs can provide a controlled and consumable method for connecting and sharing consumer and business data by creating experiences tailored to individual needs. For instance, an API-centric model can secure and manage data access to help businesses with faster decision-making and deliver relevant new services adaptable to market changes. In the future, there will be more automated continuous process improvements as machine learning models recommend, or even proactively make, process changes to improve outcomes for the business and end customer.

    Opt-in to the Composability Evolution

    To overcome the limitations of monolithic applications, businesses must rethink their approach to enterprise applications — starting with the business architecture and technology stack. A composable software architecture enables organizations to address the internal and external pressures that send shockwaves throughout the value chain. 

    As a composable enterprise, organizations can re-engineer their businesses to ensure customer touchpoints and stages come together for better moments of service, but companies must be certain that processes are optimized across each of these inflection points to mitigate issues and fuel growth. An IT architecture built on a foundation of composability will be essential to the successful delivery of a software-powered business development strategy that can provide continual value to customers and the business itself. 

  • GitLab Revamps Observability Strategy After Acquiring Opstrace

    GitLab Revamps Observability Strategy After Acquiring Opstrace

    GitLab plans to make observability a more integrated element of its continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform after acquiring Opstrace.

    Opstrace’s open source project exposes a horizontally scalable application programming interface (API) created by Cortex for Prometheus, an open source monitoring platform being advanced under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It then makes use of a Loki API to collect log data.

    DevOps teams can also point an existing instance of Prometheus to Opstrace or any instance of Fluentd or Promtail software they are using to collect log data, with support for a wide variety of other APIs, such as the Datadog agent, planned. A command line interface (CLI) is provided to set an instance of Opstrace that creates a controller through which the collecting of log data is managed.

    Kenny Johnston, senior director for product management for GitLab, said as part of an ongoing effort to make observability more accessible, GitLab plans to integrate Opstrace by default with GitLab Monitor for organizations that use either the self-managed version of GitLab or the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

    Opstrace currently collects logs and metrics and support for distributed traces is planned. The goal is to extend the overall scope of observability capabilities that GitLab already provides within its CI/CD platform, noted Johnston. The goal is to make it simpler for DevOps teams to employ observability capabilities and interrogate data to optimize workflows without acquiring a separate observability platform, he added.

    GitLab is betting that, as Prometheus continues to gain traction, more DevOps teams will prefer to extend its reach into the realm of observability rather than having to manage a separate platform.

    Although observability has always been a core tenet of DevOps best practices, achieving it has proven to be a challenge. At best, most organizations can continuously monitor IT environments based on predefined metrics that identify when a specific platform or application is performing within expectations. Observability combines metrics, logs and traces—a specialized form of logging—to instrument applications in a way that makes it simpler to troubleshot issues without having to rely solely on a limited set of pre-defined metrics that have been created to monitor a specific process or function.

    The rate at which DevOps teams will embrace observability will naturally vary. In 2022, the biggest obstacle might not be the technology as much as it is simply understanding what queries can help DevOps teams better understand the root cause of an IT issue before there is a major disruption. In the long term, it’s expected that machine learning algorithms will leverage the data collected by observability platforms to automatically identify issues that might lead to a disruption long before it actually occurs.

    One way or another, the ability to discern events even within the most complex IT environment is steadily improving. Whether that’s accomplished as an extension of monitoring or by embracing true observability may not be all that relevant—as long as the ultimate goal is achieved.

  • Intel Expands Scope of OneAPI Toolkit Initiative

    Intel Expands Scope of OneAPI Toolkit Initiative

    Intel has made available a 2022 edition of its oneAPI toolkit through which it makes processor extensions accessible to DevOps teams.

    James Reinders, chief evangelist for Intel software products, said the goal is to make it simpler for DevOps teams to expose extensions to any company’s processors in the runtimes developers use.

    At its core, the oneAPI toolkit is a collection of APIs that Intel created for x86, graphics processing units (GPUs), application-specific integrated chips (ASICs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other classes of processors.

    Reinders noted that developers have never had as much ready access to so many different processor classes before. The challenge organizations face, however, is making it simpler for developers to take advantage of those capabilities in a way that doesn’t require them to write low-level code, he added.

    The oneAPI 2022 toolkit adds additional capabilities including the world’s first unified compiler implementing C++, SYCL and Fortran, data-parallel Python for CPUs and GPUs, advanced accelerator performance modeling and tuning and performance acceleration for artificial intelligence (AI) and ray tracing visualization workloads. Collectively, Intel said it has made 900 new and enhanced features available via the oneAPI toolkit in the last year, including deeper Microsoft Visual Studio Code integration, support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 and Microsoft WSL2 for Linux development on Windows.

    As IT continues to evolve it will become more routine for developers to invoke heterogeneous classes of processors within the same application, said Reinders. Those capabilities will drive an explosion of software development innovation through the rest of the decade and beyond, he added.

    Intel is especially focused on making it easier for developers to invoke inference engines that take advantage of processor extensions to run AI workloads, Reinders said. Going forward, most applications will take advantage of machine learning algorithms that run inference engines optimized by Intel via extensions to its processors. As those workloads are constructed, integrating AI models within DevOps workflows will become the next major challenge, noted Reinders.

    It’s too early to say how simplified access to heterogeneous processors, also known as XPUs, might change the application development landscape. The one thing that is clear is IT organizations now have more options than ever. The issue now is finding a way to invoke all those capabilities in a way that doesn’t overwhelm developers. DevOps teams will play a key role in deciding which processors and associated extensions to make available to their development teams.

    In the meantime, the battle for processor dominance will only intensify in the months ahead. DevOps teams will need to decide how comfortable they are using processors manufactured by a single company like Intel or whether they want to employ a mix of processors provided by multiple vendors. Regardless of what they decide, it appears APIs will play a critical role in making it easier to benefit from advances in processor technologies.

  • Crafting an Agile Enterprise Architecture

    Crafting an Agile Enterprise Architecture

    Digital transformation, business agility and enterprise architecture are frequently heard terms in this era of digital technologies and rapid change. The appropriation of digitalized applications, solutions and processes has enabled organizations to increase efficiencies. In turn, this allows them to respond to shifting customer needs and trends in a more flexible and agile manner. 

    Digital transformation, the rise in mobility and a remote workforce have created a shift in the business model paradigm. The adoption of a more agile approach has been gathering steam, and businesses that are building agility into their processes are seeing the payoffs. The results are greater productivity, faster time-to-market (TTM) and increased consumer satisfaction.  

    The Culture of Agile 

    Digital transformation succeeds in a business environment that embraces a more collaborative and flexible philosophy. Moving from simply doing agile business processes to being agile across the board requires a shift in the corporate mindset. When a business develops a truly agile architecture, everyone in the enterprise is involved in delivering solutions; from business operations and tech to marketing, finance, compliance and security. The agile culture moves from a company-oriented one to a people or customer-oriented culture, embracing the tenets of collaboration, co-creation, ownership, flexibility and communication.

    Short-Term Cycles and Fluid Planning

    Agility is redefining enterprise architecture from the traditional schematic of centralized governance, lengthy development cycles, scheduled quarterly reviews and reliance on a waterfall delivery method. Instead of long-term operating and strategy plans, agile enterprise architecture involves short-term cycles and fluid planning that is customer and market-centric. The language changes from top-down project mandates and management to continuous product development, experimentation, testing and monitoring within collaborative product teams. 

    Essentials for Crafting Your Agile Enterprise Architecture 

    The blueprint for a truly agile architecture requires fundamental shifts in the business dynamic. There are three essentials that stand out as requirements for attaining agility across the entire enterprise. 

    • Collaboration – The bedrock of successful enterprise-wide agility is collaboration. Innovation will flourish when it is decentralized, and isolated silos give way to cross-functional, agile and self-organizing teams. An isolated IT team leads to delayed projects, overrun budgets, productivity that is hard to measure and disconnects between business and operations. Every department must be involved in supporting and achieving key business goals. 

    Teams containing a mix of business line and IT professionals accelerate development and delivery, greatly reducing time to market. Based upon a shared customer-centric goal and vision, there is shared ownership of outcomes and a deeper level of engagement throughout the enterprise. Daily communication and collaborative feedback nurtures creativity, problem-solving, and drive continuous integration and continuous development. Collaborative input from colleagues, inside and outside the organization, is essential for enterprise, technology, and solution architects. 

    • Current state mapping – Adopting agile practices and principles throughout an enterprise entails potentially massive change. Without a clear roadmap for navigating the process, a business can flounder. Instead of achieving a leaner simplicity, there is increased complexity and a muddied vision. Before a business can successfully embrace an agile architecture, the current state of operations must be fully understood. Essentially, a blueprint of functionalities, capabilities, applications, and the tech stack must be crafted. Everything, from the data catalog to business process workflows must be mapped. Business leaders can ask the following questions to analyze the current state and assess impact points:
    • Which projects should we prioritize and what capabilities will they require?
    • Which processes rely upon what software applications?
    • If we remove one or two apps, how will that impact processes?

    Once the blueprint of the current state is mapped out, a business can work in a structured way to create the future state of its architecture with ease and at its own pace. 

    • Balance agile transformation with daily operations – Continuing to work with some of the current architecture for a time can allow the top level of the organization to ease into adopting the agile mindset and culture. In the iterative process of developing agile architecture, the architects, executives, and tech leaders will need to strike a balance between transforming initiatives and effectively maintaining daily operations. They will have to discern how much direction is needed versus support and how much they will set the pace.

    If the focus is first on value delivered to customers, then the architecture will be prioritized according to the most strategic projects, capabilities and applications. An agile architecture will adopt a ‘just enough’ approach to project design and delivery. 

    Agile Architecture Optimizes Collaboration

    Enterprise agility facilitates more direct communication and involvement of enterprise architects within the cross-functional teams. Through daily discussions and various touchpoints, architects can provide guidance, advice, and feedback on IT decisions and assist teams in jointly owning the solutions. 

    Working together, enterprise and solution architects can develop a complete view of the IT landscape and how it will need to be modified to fit into future needs; minimizing waste and optimizing resources. Solution architects can view the architectural map across all apps, solutions, and systems and collaborate on improvements. They can also help enterprise architects scale standardization across the entire business. That cornerstone of collaboration at the core of agile transformation enables architects and non-tech leaders alike to gain more clarity and alignment.

    The Value of Agile 

    Business value is greatly improved when enterprise architecture combines agile practices. According to a report from McKinsey & Co., businesses transitioning to more agile models can improve financial performance by 20-30%, with 30-50% improving operational performance, TTM, and customer satisfaction scores. Embedding an agile model within processes, people, and technology will cultivate ongoing support for CI/CD, groundbreaking innovation, synergistic collaboration — and ultimately maximize customer outcomes.