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Tag: COVID

  • COVID-19 Long Tail Budget Impact

    COVID-19 Long Tail Budget Impact

    Technology budgets have shifted dramatically since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study from online CIO networking and information hub, Pulse. The pandemic, and its resulting shutdown, will likely continue to have a substantial impact on technology budgets for some time.

    The initial budgetary impact was substantial. When COVID-19 first arrived, many technology budgets were frozen in place. Today, 23% of CIOs report that their budgets are still frozen with 49% reporting a decline in their technology budgets. Seventeen percent said that they expect to decrease their budgets by more than 10% in the next two months.

    Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. Many respondents, 24% of them, predict that within the next two months their budgets will rise, including 9% of respondents who believe their budgets will increase more than 10%. However, most CIOs (27%) say that their IT budget won’t change in the near future.

    “And an additional 6% anticipate their budget will become frozen in the next two months — though, on a positive note, this figure is down from 23% two months ago,” stated the report.

    Surprisingly, there hasn’t been a change in business-technology priorities over the past two months for 79% of respondents, while 21% said that they now have different priorities than from the beginning of the pandemic.

    The priorities of those surveyed include focusing on internal communication and collaboration tools (45%), mobile security (39%), customer communication and collaboration tools (37%), password management tools (28%), virtual private networks (28%), security awareness training (24%), remote desktop tools (23%), encrypted communication tools (23%), and data security tools (15%).

    “Many companies are going to allow (or require) employees to work from home after the pandemic, due to health concerns and reduced overhead. The fact that CIOs are investing in security and end-user technology — even though budgets are decreasing — indicates this,” said Brian Sampietro, CIO at  TGI Office Automation, in the report.

    For those organizations who changed their priorities, the new budget items include virtual private networks (36%), password management (32%), remote desktop tools (30%), data security tools (27%), encrypted communication tools (26%) and mobile security (21%).

    How are CIOs making decisions when it comes to technology purchases? The majority said peer recommendations (69%) and industry analysts (52%). However, social media and email fared poorly as influencers, at 23% and 20% respectively. CIOs are determining needs, according to the survey, based on both executive and end-user requests. Only 10% said they depend upon user requests alone, and only 21% said executives solely drive decisions. Interestingly, 35% of CIOs make decisions quickly: Within one week they said they will decide on the right tool to acquire. The rest said they take more than a month (26%) or within four weeks (39%).

    When it comes to layoffs, there are still rough patches ahead, as a sizable number of organizations still have layoffs on the planning table. While 48% of organizations have maintained their headcount through the COVID-19 crises, 40% do plan to cut staff sizes in the next six months, with 25% not sure if they will cut staffs.

  • DevOps Chats: Easing WFH with strongDM

    DevOps Chats: Easing WFH with strongDM

    strongDM wasn’t founded to help with remote workers forced out of the office by COVID-19. They have been around for five years now. But, the company does excel at allowing you to manage and audit remote access to all of your assets including DBs, servers and clusters (as well as apps and services) anywhere from anywhere.

    In this DevOps Chat we speak with strongDM Justin McCarthy, CTO and co-founder about how the company’s technology works and how it is helping companies move to remote access given current conditions.

    As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation.

    Transcript

    Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone, this is Alan Shimel, and you’re listening to another DevOps Chat.

    Really happy to be joined on this chat by Justin McCarthy of strongDM. Hey, Justin, welcome to DevOps Chat.

    Justin McCarthy: Hey, Alan — thanks.

    Shimel: Pleasure to have you on here, Justin. You know, as we were talking a little bit off mic, I don’t know if we’ve introduced our MediaOps community, meaning DevOps and Security Boulevard and Container Journal, we haven’t introduced strongDM to them before. So, why don’t we start with that, Justin, and if you wouldn’t mind, in telling the story, talk about a little bit about your own personal journey.

    McCarthy: Yeah, sure thing. Alright, so, first, I guess I’ll just briefly introduce myself. So, I’m the co-founder and CTO of strongDM. And the product is actually, strongDM itself is the best way to manage and audit remote access to your servers and databases and really even Kubernetes clusters. So, that’s what we focus on. We are a remote access product.

    And the way we came to it is basically just a sort of typical startup story. We’ve been around for five years now, and at the beginning, it was scratching an itch just like so many other infrastructure and DevOps products out there. So, in my career, I’d always been involved in growing the teams that built the product and, inevitably, when you build a product and when you ship and when you have production data, you need to grant access to it. To analyze it, you need to grant access to it to administer it, to debug it.

    And that process always felt a little bit somewhere between inconvenient and scary, right? [Laughter] And so, basically, strongDM — yeah, is the response to all those feelings of, that it wasn’t quite as smooth as it could be, it wasn’t quite as safe as it could be.

    Shimel: Excellent, excellent. And you mentioned the company’s around now about five years.

    McCarthy: Mm-hmm.

    Shimel: That’s cool. Alright, let’s talk about — and you’re right, a lot of companies do grow out of one particular scratch to itch, and I’ve done my share of startups over the last 25 years. And what generally happens is, you find out that that particular itch may have associated itches, right, and there’s ancillary things — well, once I scratch that itch, the next itch pops up, right? To paraphrase “The Phoenix Project” or something and bottlenecks and the goal.

    Talk to us—what’s the itch, and then what have you guys found over the five years about kinda getting to that itch and associated itches?

    McCarthy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, at the core, the technical approach that it probably takes is that we are an identity-ware proxy, okay? And the first application of that was for database access. So, that’s where we started, right?

    Shimel: Mm-hmm.

    McCarthy: And in fact, at the beginning of time, we thought maybe that was all there was to it. But as we —

    Shimel: Hold on a second, though.

    McCarthy: Yeah, sure.

    Shimel: So, an identity-ware proxy, primarily for databases. For some of our audiences — our security … actually, our DevOps audience probably gets that, some of our security folks do. But break it down for me, Justin — what exactly do you mean by that?

    McCarthy: Sure thing. So, this is an architecture that I think a lot of folks might know as Zero Trust, a lot of folks might know as BeyondCorp, and there were a lot of examples of it out there in sort of an HTTP only case. When we originally conceived of and built the product, it was kind of even prior to a lot of that nomenclature existing.

    So, what an identity-ware proxy is, it is a proxy for a given type of service. Let’s continue to use databases as the example. So, if somebody needs to interact with a Postgres database or a Microsoft SQL Server database — so, let’s say Alan needs to connect your local copy of Tableau to one of those systems, right? So, Alan would log into strongDM and then strongDM would then conduct all of the traffic, essentially, forward it to the target systems. And the identity-ware aspect is that, essentially, we know it’s Alan the whole time and we’re proxying that traffic and we’re handling, essentially, all of the routing of that traffic.

    Shimel: Got it.

    McCarthy: And what’s interesting about that is that you kind of get a lot of the sort of — you get a separation of sort of Alan’s identity from, you know, the credentialing of the underlying system. So, you can actually credential that separately, which means you can rotate the underlying credentials without bothering Alan.

    Shimel: Now, in and of itself, can that be a security kinda setting up kinda almost a man in the middle type of situation?

    McCarthy: Yeah, so, in a lot of enterprises and environments, you at some point, you have to answer the question, how are we gonna audit this particular traffic stream, right? And so, there are also a lot of products out there that are dedicated to, for example, breaking TLS, right? Being the official man in the middle, right?

    Shimel: Yep.

    McCarthy: So, our product has an element of that built in, although it’s not a generic TLS breaker. What it is, is it’s a protocol specific way to answer the question, you know, given MySQL database selection, what would you want to know about what Alan did yesterday? And so, our product is focused on extracting that kind of rich information about what Alan did yesterday with respect to this MySQL connection.

    Shimel: Sure — great, great. Now, what made databases sort of, you know, the prime example of where to use this or as the first use case?

    McCarthy: Yeah, it was the first use case, largely because, again, we were scratching our own itch. [Laughter] So, that was the one that I most often encountered.

    Shimel: Okay.

    McCarthy: You know, and the appeal is, it’s phrased as, you know, “Can I please have access to this because I need to debug X?” Right? And that always, whoever is saying yes or maybe or no to that request, you know, there’s a lot of hope and trust that when you say yes it’s gonna be okay. So, what our product does is, it takes all that, the sort of emotions around that event [Laughter] and tries to give you an answer for how you make that convenient and how you make that safe for everyone.

    Shimel: Excellent, man — good. Alright. So, first ditch is the database and we figure that out and go from there, Justin.

    McCarthy: Sure. So, as I’m sure, as you found with many products, you know, why adopt 10 different products when you can get your existing vendor to do one more thing for you and then maybe reduce and concentrate more of your attention on one tool and so, that’s where our customers pushed us. And so, the next very strong demand that we saw was, now that all of our data systems are granted and revoked access through strongDM, could you also begin to do some of the interactive session and shell-based protocols? So, the first two there were obviously SSH and Windows Remote Desktop. So, that’s where we went next.

    And the theme, if you can sort of imagine it is, you know, everyone in my organization that maybe has engineer in their title or even analyst or scientist — essentially, all of those folks, they need more than just webpages to do their job, right?

    Shimel: They do.

    McCarthy: And so, if it were just webpages, then existing single sign-on would work great, right? But since it’s more than that, it’s deeper than that, it’s really that whole collection of use cases that our customers began asking us to take on.

    Shimel: Excellent. Good stuff. And so, let’s talk a little bit about — so, how, is this sort of distributed as a SaaS kind of thing or a web-based kinda interface? How does that work?

    McCarthy: Sure, yeah. I would say we are neither traditional SaaS, nor traditional on prem. So, in terms of how the product deploys, our customers end up running a bunch of it, but not all of it. So, with any system that involves credentials, any system that involves cryptography, operating it successfully and carefully is actually a huge part of getting it right, okay?

    Shimel: Mm-hmm.

    McCarthy: So, what we’ve tried to do is, we’ve tried to unify the sort of operation configuration. So, if you think of it like centralizing the policies, centralizing the key management.

    Shimel: Yeah.

    McCarthy: So, that’s the part that we host. But the part that actually runs the proxies and therefore essentially the actual conduits for all the data, that runs entirely in customer environments.

    Shimel: And what kind of environment are you talking about?

    McCarthy: Yeah, so, I would say our average customer, the answer is, like, several. [Laughter] So, there are very few environments where you have just one cloud, where you have just one prem data center. So, it ends up actually being several. And so, that’s another strength of our architecture and our approach is that our product, from day zero, was designed with that in mind, so you can run our proxies in Azure and in AWS and in your existing legacy data center. They all unify into one sort of access plane, and it doesn’t matter the product. The same grant access gesture applies to all of those environments.

    Shimel: Oh, okay. Very cool. Very cool. And, you know, from what you’re describing, to me, it doesn’t really make a difference whether I’m a cloud native company, let’s call it, right, or maybe an old line company that had my database running in the closet, right? This kind of identity by proxy is still something I can utilize to make my life easier.

    McCarthy: Yeah, absolutely. And of course, we would hope that it’s especially suited to a hybrid environment like that, because the ability to, from an end user point of view, from one of your data scientists, they just know the three logical things they need to access to do their job. They definitely don’t care what cloud it’s hosted in. They don’t care what data center it’s hosted in, but from the point of view of that end user, it just looks like one thing.

    Shimel: Okay. Now, let’s look at it from the lens of COVID, which we kinda always have to look at everything today through this lens — it seems like this would be a help, right, if I just had to move my whole workforce home, you know, remote. What have you guys been seeing on that?

    McCarthy: Yeah, I think our story there is pretty similar to what a lot of companies that are part of the sort of next generation of IT and — we’re sort of seeing the same trend that everybody else, more people moving remove, therefore any remote access products are, there’s a lot more interest at the moment.

    So, we were always about granting access remotely. It was always a workforce that was going to be distributed. That was our typical customer, anyway. So, it’s definitely the same theme, but just more than we were seeing pre-COVID.

    Shimel: Excellent, man. Now, one thing — it’s funny, I just had a conversation with another company within the IDM space, kind of in like an ED directory service, let’s call it, and this popped up. With the people working from home, with the explosion of how many apps and SaaS services, you know, we’re all accessing right now, it’s great to be able to have just a single proxy, if you will. So, I only have to worry about really going once and then on the back end, it connects to all of these services, let’s call them, or apps.

    And so, from my point of view, that’s a great thing. From your point of view, Justin, right, now you’ve gotta hook into all of these different, new apps and services. How do you do that? Is that via API? Is it a one-off for every one you’ve gotta go into? You know, what’s involved there if I bring you — you know, some app you guys haven’t encountered before?

    McCarthy: Yep, sure. So, I do, there is an important distinction here. There’s a generation and a category of products that you might call them cloud brokers, right? So, cloud access security brokers, that category where you have a workforce that needs to access Salesforce, needs to access another SaaS application. We consider that sort of part of the market to be something that’s necessary but not our specialty.

    Shimel: Not your place.

    McCarthy: Yeah. So, our specialty is, again, it’s that staff where there’s probably an engineer or somehow technical, there’s a technical name in their role somewhere, and they need access to things that aren’t webpages. And so, for that, the procedure is — hey, I’ve got this maybe let’s say even legacy database or I’ve got this type of terminal access that we do that, let’s say we’ve got a lot of machines that are connected via VNC or something. So, and let’s say that’s not on our official supportive protocols list yet. It’s as simple as, we do an intake, we understand the protocol, we add it to the product — that’s it.

    Shimel: Okay. So, you guys do that. I don’t do that myself. I don’t have to kinda write to an API or something and make —

    McCarthy: Yeah, no, exactly. Any system that feels like any sort of client server access paradigm, we can model it in our, essentially in our platform, and then begin granting access to it.

    Shimel: Okay. Almost out of time, Justin. One more area I wanted to hit on this one, though, and that is — talk to me about what to set up here, right? Whether I’m doing it on the cloud, prem, a little of both — how big a job is it to get this thing up and running?

    McCarthy: Yeah. So, we also, of course, have the advantage of — like I said, we’re five years old, but that means we’re only five years old. [Laughter] So, we knew it had to be easy, right? Yeah.

    So, yeah, the act of deploying our proxies is essentially roughly turning it on. Because what then the proxies do is, they take over, for example, topics like discovery. So, they discover what host names they can access and they begin exposing it back to it in the administrative console. So, that’s the one aspect that, you know, deploying it is pretty much turning on the software.

    Additionally, because so many of our customers rely heavily on automation for their DevOps, another way to think of it is, if you already have, if you already have a great Terraform setup that you’re happy with, you have a great cloud formation setup that you’re happy with, we are gonna integrate natively with that setup as well. So, it’s going to be, you’re essentially the overlay, your proxy overlay on your existing infrastructure is gonna go in and it’s gonna feel exactly like anything else that you’re familiar with deploying via Terraform or inside your Kubernetes cluster, for example.

    Shimel: Perfect, man. All good stuff. Justin, I promised you we were gonna do 15 minutes, but I blew it — but not too bad. We’re not too bad. Well, we’re gonna have you back on. It’s gonna be a little bit of a continuing series, right? So, look forward to our next conversation.

    You know what I realized? We didn’t even mention the website, though. So, for people who want more information, it’s strongDM, S-T-R-O-N-G-D-M-dot com, right?

    McCarthy: Yep.

    Shimel: And then can get, if they wanna go check stuff out there. And we’ll have you back on real soon and continue this, man. Sounds great.

    McCarthy: Great. Alright, thanks a lot, Alan.

    Shimel: Alright. Justin McCarthy, CTO and co-founder of strongDM here on DevOps Chat. Hey, this is Alan Shimel, and you’ve just listened to another DevOps Chat.

  • How DevOps Can Save Your Business from COVID-19

    How DevOps Can Save Your Business from COVID-19

    COVID-19 drastically changed the landscape of the American workforce. Remote work went from something of a niche field to a way of life for millions of people. In fact, research shows that roughly half of all employed Americans began working from home as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. 

    While some employers struggle to adapt to this new way of life, others adapted quickly. Looking forward to the future, the ability to adapt in this way could mean life or death for many businesses. 

    It does not look like this trend will end once a vaccine is found for the disease. Many major companies, including Mondelez and Barclays, have said that working from home may become a permanent fixture of their business models. It is easy to see why. In such an advanced age of technology and communication, people can talk to each other over the phone or computer as easily as walking to someone’s desk. 

    Very soon, a business could utilize 1,000 home locations instead of just one. But all of this comes down to the abilities of IT departments nationwide.

    A recent report from GitHub came out focusing on new software development in the era of COVID-19. While there have inevitably been disruptions in numerous industries, IT professionals have more than met the challenge. The report’s author, Nicole Forsgren, was even quoted as saying, “Developers have continued to contribute and show resilience in the face of uncertainty.” So going into the future, what could be every organizational team’s best friend? 

    If you look at where the market is heading, then it certainly seems like DevOps is in for a massive boom. 

    The Resilience of DevOps

    The need for reliable software has only increased as more and more people attain smartphones and other essential pieces of technology. Five billion people now own mobile phones, which is going to result in speed problems across the globe. This is where DevOps steps in to pick up the pieces. 

    DevOps has the ability to sync, organize and automate the pace of new software releases. By design, it is made for remote operations. However, it also remains viable for operations that take place in the office or any other location. DevOps has the capability of adapting and changing along with the world around it. 

    In the era of COVID-19, that is an incredibly advantageous model as companies may want to work in an office building one week and from home the next. It is the software you need for the world you live in. 

    However, DevOps is only as good as the people utilizing it. It can be a challenge for individuals at companies, who already have so much on their plates, to adapt to the DevOps model. That is why the company has come out with the DevOps Institute. At this point, it just comes down to companies finding the right people who have the necessary technical prowess and soft skills to bring the benefits of DevOps to their workplaces. 

    According to data collected by DevOps, it certainly seems like many businesses face shortages of people skilled in information technology and other skills that could help them adapt to a more remote way of working. 

    The report shows that 48% of respondents were not entering the workforce with the skills needed to manage modern IT environments. Out of all of the people surveyed, only 28% said they believe new workers came in with essential skill sets. 

    These skills will only grow more vital as more businesses begin working from home. For example, the ability to communicate rapidly is essential when people are not in the same location. And it may not come down to human errors either. Faulty technology could result in people not seeing messages or emails on-time, delaying crucial projects. 

    The perfect DevOps engineer will be an individual who has the perfect balance of hard and soft skills. It is someone who knows how to correct a network error promptly but has the communication skills necessary to reach out when issues arise. The ideal DevOps engineer for a company is someone who understands how VPNs work inside and out but also communicates in a manner other people outside of the IT department can understand. 

    Additional Considerations for Implementing DevOps

    There are extra considerations that need to be brought to the table for companies interested in utilizing DevOps. For starters, people in a company need to get started pushing technology and DevOps toward the cloud. In a situation like the COVID-19 crisis, there is no clear timeline of when things will get back to normal. If your company is not already utilizing the cloud, then it is high time to get started. 

    Next, companies need to begin implementing automation as far as possible. Delays in communication can set back company timelines by weeks or even months. Plus, when people are aware, you are going to realize how much time is actually spent performing various tasks that could be done through software. 

    Instead of having a person check for malware, you can have everyone install malware scanners onto their computers so that their safety is being examined in the background as they focus on more important tasks. Detecting malware is only the beginning as businesses can also use automation to test functionalities and deploy to several environments simultaneously. 

    Lastly, as employers turn to DevOps to meet their companies’ obligations, it is critical to keep an eye on potential burnout. With more people working from home, they need to juggle work, family and other obligations in closer corners. 

    DevOps can be a huge lifesaver, but you want to make sure you give your employees sustainable workloads your team can handle. This time is also good to establish clear boundaries between people’s personal lives and work. It can be a good idea to set clear hours for when employees can communicate with each other. Outside of that time frame, it is important to let people relax and focus on other aspects of their lives. 

    Conclusion

    The COVID-19 crisis will pass, but the American workforce may never look the same. Many organizations may end up deciding there are more benefits to working from home than renting an office space. People will get through this, and DevOps will be there to lend a helping hand.

  • COVID-19, the New Normal and the Indisputable Importance of Mobile App Security

    COVID-19, the New Normal and the Indisputable Importance of Mobile App Security

    As the United States emerges from COVID-19 lockdown, it’s not back to business as usual. COVID-19 remains a very serious risk, and until a vaccine or treatment arrives, we will all need to remain vigilant. Further, it’s also certain that the new normal post-COVID-19 world represents a fundamental transformation in how businesses operate, with mobile business models taking center stage.

    For most businesses, their storefront was their most important asset for awareness and revenue generation prior to the pandemic. Having a good physical location was critical to bringing in foot traffic and allowing customers to easily discover them. In the new normal, however, digital location has become far more important as consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices. So, it’s critical for businesses to make apps that are easy to find and use in order to continue generating revenue going forward.

    The combination of the pandemic and growing mobile usage has made developing and updating apps not just a nice-to-have marketing tool, but a necessary task for business survival. An enormous number of previously casual mobile users are now depending on mobile apps for their banking, shopping and other day-to-day transactions. As such, businesses need to redesign their apps to ensure they’re easy and intuitive to use so they don’t lose those potential customers. This requires developers to iterate even faster to deliver an engaging, glitch-free experience.

    Unfortunately, in the mad rush to ship apps as fast as possible, security often gets short shrift in favor of features and functionality. According to the Verizon Mobile Security Index 2020, even before the pandemic hit, 43% of app developers said they knew they were cutting corners on security to “get the job done.” 

    Features Trump Security … Until They Don’t

    Now with business models hinging on mobile, developers can no longer rest on “features first, security later” mentalities. The struggle here is that implementing mobile app security is hard to do. It takes time, often extending the development cycle, and it’s expensive. Even if development teams are committed to implementing security, they may lack the skills to do so — good iOS and Android security engineers are scarce and in high demand.

    Eventually, however, poor security will bring consequences. Cybercriminals operate much like nimble startups, searching for opportunities, creating minimal viable malware and then continually improving it to become more effective. Case in point: the EventBot malware for Android that was discovered in April. It masquerades as a legitimate app, such as a banking app or other popular consumer that, once installed, harvest unprotected data from other apps on a device. EventBot also can intercept text messages (SMS) sent to the device, which enables it to capture the identity verification codes used by multi-factor authentication solutions. With access to these codes and the unprotected user credentials found in the app, hackers can easily launch account takeover attacks on tens of thousands of unsuspecting mobile app users.

    What’s more, the new normal post-COVID-19 world is causing a huge increase in app usage, cybercriminals and hackers believe that the time is ripe to start exploiting known mobile app security flaws. For example, it’s not a secret that most mobile apps lack basic encryption. Similarly, most apps can be tampered with, repackaged and distributed on non-official app stores. With malware like EventBot that can be embedded in popular apps that users already trust, the game for mobile app exploits has been upped dramatically.

    EventBot is just one example of why it’s critical for app developers to encrypt all app data (including the strings, resources and in-app preferences that are stored on the device), obfuscate code and shield apps from tampering and reverse engineering efforts. Doing so will stop EventBot and other potential attacks, and prevent cybercriminals from using apps as Trojans for additional attacks.

    Solutions to the Security Development Challenge 

    If a development team decides the best route is to implement security themselves, they should first make sure they have the appropriate skills in house. If so, a good start is to address each of the OWASP Mobile Top Ten vulnerabilities. 

    Other development teams turn to security software development kits (SDKs), which they will integrate into their apps to provide security. This reduces the scope of the coding but still requires developers to have extensive security experience, and it’s critical to vet SDKs before integrating them, because rogue and vulnerable SDKs are a serious problem in the mobile app industry.

    A final option is security automation through artificial intelligence. It’s fast, taking just minutes to completely secure an app without any coding, and compared to manual coding, it’s inexpensive. But, as you should do anytime you’re outsourcing security, do your due diligence to make sure the platform truly secures the app without introducing additional vulnerabilities.

    The new normal has elevated the importance of mobile apps as the primary way customers interact with businesses, and cybercriminals are taking note. So, in the race to provide an engaging, intuitive experience for customers, don’t neglect their safety. Focusing on features and functionality at the expense of security might pay off in the short-term, but the long-term consequences could be grave. Identify the security development model that will work best for your team, but make sure you implement security quickly. Cybercriminals will not wait for you to prepare before launching new, even more devastating attacks.

  • Surviving Through the New Normal

    Surviving Through the New Normal

    As enterprises move from the first phase of the pandemic to the reopening phase, they’re going to have to determine what tech investments going forward will provide the most value in the their new normal.

    Emad Georgy, founder and CTO at consulting firm Georgy Technology Leadership, said that while overall tech spending will remain down, that pain won’t be evenly distributed. Georgy claimed that investments will continue to remain high in the obvious industries, of course, such as healthcare, retail and grocery chains.

    “However, multiple adjacent and dependent businesses investments will also remain high. Suppliers of materials required by these industries, companies involved in their supply chain, companies supporting remote collaboration tools will continue to thrive,” said Georgy.

    Coming off the heels of the economic shutdown, Alex Milowski, platforms researcher and evangelist at database management software provider Redis Labs, said that both people and systems have experienced significant disruptions, and this has hurt their productivity and strained technology platforms in some ways, while for other job functions platform and infrastructure are at over capacity.

    Milowski said organizations needed to strike a balance between the immediate needs of staff, so that they could adjust to the changes in their work and lives and still access critical work systems while also ensuring that customer needs are also met.

    However, now that enterprises are looking forward, how do they ensure that their digital transformation efforts remain in place?

    As enterprises get their footing as the new economic reality settles in, Milowski advised organizations to focus on small wins.

    “Prioritizing projects where one can increase the confidence of the team to function under uncertainty may be the best strategy. New projects may need to be created to address surges in demand via caching or acceleration systems,” said Milowski. “A team might use this time to address auto-scaling systems so they can scale-down as a cost-saving measure. The increased collaboration and creative problem solving will build team confidence in their ability to deliver. With each win, ensure readiness is improving.”

    Within those early successes, teams can then troubleshoot their processes with less disruption to their business.

    “As their confidence grows, they can ease into picking more business-critical and complex projects. In the end, they are more likely to succeed, with less disruption, as their team is now ready as they know how to deliver new digital initiatives in very different contexts. Successive small wins turn into big wins,” said Milowski.

    Georgy indicated that such uncertain times require a sharp focus and prioritization.

    “Financial insecurity often leads to sharpened discipline which one could argue we should have anyway in an organization. Unfortunately, many companies are plagued by ‘management by assumption.’ That is the practice of managing and deciding based on opinions or second-hand knowledge because they don’t have time to [dig into] the weeds,” he said.

    It’s time to prove concepts out. Georgy added that it’s more important than ever to make data-driven decisions based on experiential learning.

    “Opinions are no longer welcome. Every person at the decision table must justify their decisions with data, with real-world experience and with action,” he said.

    That can be done by CIOs as they track their changing customer base.

    “Customers are changing how they spend and re-evaluating what is important to them and this will be reflected in roadmaps as well. Now, more than ever, feedback loops, usability groups and touchpoints with customers to understand this changing dynamic is key to evaluate new approaches and priorities in the roadmap,” said Georgy.

    John Belden, project execution advisory services practice leader at UpperEdge, stated that now is the opportunity for CIOs to lead in a way that hasn’t been readily possible in more than 20 years.

    Belden advised CIOs to:

    • Take the lead: CIOs can win back the seat at the management table that they enjoyed during the Y2K era. By proactively reaching out to work with counterparts in HR, marketing and supply chain, CIOs can shift from order-taker to problem-solver, which will also help in prioritizing projects.
    • Determine an approach to road-mapping: There are likely to be three different strategies to road-mapping and navigating this time:
      1. Reinvent: This approach establishes a clean sheet of paper and takes a more traditional approach. Companies that could never get the cash or attention to build a roadmap, might have this work thrust upon them if corporate boards demand a pandemic risk mitigation plan.
      2. Revise: This would involve the shuffling of the existing portfolio, some reprioritization and confirmation of direction from the various vendor’s strategies.
      3. Accelerate: Some companies may have already charted a course that accounts for assumptions of a new world order. In these cases, it is likely that CIOs will be asked to accelerate to either leap-frog competitors or solidify their competitive position.
    • Transform vendor engagement strategy: The onslaught of vendor marketing initiatives and client targeting strategies could end up being like the wild west with cloud providers bypassing traditional IT channels to market their wares. CIOs need to work proactively with their business counterparts to set the ground rules for engagement and craft a strategy that motivates suppliers to assist clients in developing their own strategies that can be realized quickly and efficiently. Developing a long-term view in managing the short-term downtime will, in the end, pay dividends in executing during this economic downturn.

    Short-term survival with an eye on meeting long-term goals is key to survival, and in the months ahead those enterprises that successfully meet that balance will set themselves apart.

  • How SD-WAN Is Driving Business Continuity in a COVID World

    How SD-WAN Is Driving Business Continuity in a COVID World

    The coronavirus outbreak has thrown the economy into flux, creating changes to entire industries that would have been unpredictable a few months ago. While demand for travel has decreased dramatically, other businesses such as grocery chains, financial services and retailers are under immense pressure to serve customers in new ways. Enterprises with thousands of employees have been forced to work from home on a moment’s notice. For the IT departments powering these industries, SD-WAN will be key in increasing visibility for newly remote companies, ensuring company data is heavily guarded and managing demand for products.

    As stay at home orders made their way across the U.S., companies with thousands of employees had to immediately start working from home, many for the first time. In other words, companies were forced to navigate a completely remote workforce with little opportunity to put the infrastructure and tools in place to support its employees. Without adequate time to prepare for a smooth transition, a number of issues arose, such as realizing that IT departments didn’t have insight into the user experience of business applications for their employees’ home networks. As a result, they were unable to monitor performance and usage patterns to anticipate potential issues for employees. IT workers were unable to remotely troubleshoot and fix networking issues, increasing pain points across teams and decreasing overall productivity.

    SD-WAN Becomes IT’s Saving Grace

    This is where an AI-Driven SD-WAN can play a major role in managing remote enterprise networks to deliver better experiences and ultimately boost productivity. By providing full visibility into what’s happening across the network, AI-driven SD-WAN solutions can ease the burden of a remote workforce by proactivity responding to real-time issues. The sources of problems across the network can be vast. Intelligent SD-WAN systems not only find the root causes of problems, but also provide solutions. This can save IT departments significant time and effort in troubleshooting an issue, improving the remote IT operational experience as well as the employee work from home experience. 

    Doubling Down on Secure SD-WAN

    Security is another network concern that comes into play when employees work from home. There is an overwhelming amount of confidential data flowing across each network, and in this new environment, enterprises must take extra precautions to ensure data is heavily protected. As employees move out of the office, they’re relying more on home and public networks, moving sensitive corporate data to insecure spaces. 

    IT teams are increasingly relying on SD-WAN to help improve network security by encrypting traffic and segmenting the network to minimize damage if breaches do occur. Secure SD-WAN incorporates security solutions including firewall, anti-spam and web filtering. These solutions work together to prevent remote employees from accidentally leaking data or causing network security disruptions that can affect the rest of the workforce. SD-WAN is critical in improving a company’s overall security posture. By implementing a secure SD-WAN solution, companies can have more peace of mind, and employees can focus on their task at hand.

    The Role of SD-WAN in Evolving Supply Chains

    As employees spend more time working and living at home, their new consumer behaviors are quickly changing overall demand and forcing supply chains to evolve accordingly. Companies have scrambled to get a handle on their supply chains, and SD-WAN has become a key component in managing the demand for products; by shifting to the cloud and integrating SD-WAN into product inventory, companies can have access to cloud resources to power their inventory systems. For example, by integrating SD-WAN into grocery store chains, individual stores have been able to communicate with each other and support constantly changing customer needs. An increased demand for yeast at one store can be balanced by a decrease in demand in another. Enterprises can use the inventory system to allocate their products accordingly and record patterns to provide restocking guidance that is up to date as consumer behaviors continue to evolve.

    The Bottom Line

    Ease of management, security and visibility are the key pillars to ensure business continuity for enterprises in a COVID world, and by doubling down on SD-WAN, organizations can benefit from all three.

    SD-WAN is quickly becoming the unsung hero in this shift to remote work by giving organizations the network visibility IT managers require as well as extra security precautions that are more critical than ever. And as businesses and our ways of working continue to evolve with the times, SD-WAN will enable employees across organizational networks to communicate safely and securely.

  • Driverless Cars May Become an Integral Part of Our Lives Soon

    Driverless Cars May Become an Integral Part of Our Lives Soon

    If you live in the downtown areas of Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Miami or other AV hot spots, you’ve probably been missing the Ford Fusion Hybrids with the bulky lidar sensors in your neighborhoods. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many job cuts as well as work from home orders from the government, and this has forced big driverless car technology companies such as Argo AI, Waymo, Aurora, etc., to halt on-road testing of their vehicles and work remotely.

    This would impact many automobile companies partnered with these firms that had plans to mass produce and release their fully autonomous vehicles by the end of 2021, including the Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen Group, BMW, etc. The only way to bring back the accelerated development and testing of these technologies is by realizing their current value in the consumer market, especially when humans need resources to be delivered to them without spreading the virus further.

    This article will shed insight on some perks that autonomous vehicles provide in mitigating the widespread impact of this virus, as well as whether these advantages make us realize their value in everyday life.

    Home Delivery Without a Human Delivery Worker

    We’ve all tried delivery when in a rush or simply when we’re too lazy to go out and buy food or groceries. This used to be an occasional thing for the most of us; something we wouldn’t do every time we purchased an item because the delivery charge was an additional expense. But COVID-19 has changed our entire lifestyle dramatically, and now most of us order our groceries online or through shopping apps such as Instacart or Amazon, so that we can avoid having to physically go to the store. While this seems like a better alternative, it also puts millions of delivery workers at risk of contracting and spreading the virus, making the outbreak worse than it originally seemed.

    Autonomous delivery vehicles are a potential solution to this issue, since they allow for driverless home delivery of items that customers have purchased online, limiting physical interactions with the items to two point-contact (store shopper and customer). Nuro, a leading self-driving vehicle startup in the U.S. founded by former Google engineers Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, recently became the first driverless car manufacturer to obtain permission from the Department of Transportation (DOT) to produce and put driverless cars into action for home delivery. The R2, Nuro’s second generation driverless car after the original R1, is a low-speed vehicle that can interpret and adapt to a wide variety of weather and road conditions, while not posing considerable risks for pedestrian safety. Its maximum speed is sealed at 25 mph with self-adjusting acceleration and braking control in response to traffic flow and obstacle detection.

    Like most driverless cars, R2 does not possess a steering wheel, rear-view mirrors and actuator pedals, placing it in the exemption category for vehicle production according to the DOT’s Federal Motor Safety Standards (FMVSS). This is an exemption that is not easily approved by the DOT, with many automobile companies trying their luck at getting their mass driverless car production proposals approved without success, until Nuro recently hit the jackpot.

    Although this exemption has only been approved “with regulatory certainty” as of now, due to the low speeds that R2 can travel, it has enabled Nuro to get more R2s out working in Houston, delivering customer orders from Walmart, Domino’s and Kroger. The R2 is a start to transitioning to a fully driverless delivery experience, which in our current state, is a great way to prevent the spread of the virus from exacerbating further. 

    Could Autonomous Vehicles Be Our New Mail Trucks?

    Every week, thousands of mail workers across the U.S. hop into their mail trucks and drive to multiple neighborhoods and communities that they serve, in order to deliver mail to residents. Receiving mail in a timely manner is very important for the most of us, since we need to pay our bills for water, electricity, gas, etc., every month and most of these statements arrive by mail. During this pandemic, mail workers have been working long hours to get all of our mail delivered to us without delay. Through this process, they haven’t been able to take many days off to spend with their own families or rest at home if they get sick, making them even more vulnerable to catching the coronavirus.

    Autonomous mail trucks are a solution that USPS has been considering since late 2017, and to fulfill this dream the Postal Service has partnered with the University of Michigan and TuSimple, a self-driving truck startup. The plans to put an autonomous mail truck to work have only been extended as test runs to a couple of cities across the U.S., such as Phoenix and Dallas, and about 10 rural routes in Michigan as of May 2019. Although these remain a viable solution to be used in conjunction with traditional mail delivery by mail workers, efforts to develop autonomous mail trucks has declined over the COVID-19 crisis due to other priorities that have sprung up.

    Counter to this thought, introducing autonomous mail delivery vehicles during this time to assist mail workers (as originally planned by USPS) or operate independently with robotic assistance in at least a few areas that have already been tested and approved, would highly facilitate the mail delivery process and reduce the stress and workload of mail workers across the United States.

    The latter option would allow mail to be delivered directly to customers, with robots inside the vehicles serving as mail workers that sort and place mail in each resident’s mailbox. Residents can pick up their mail directly from their mailboxes without needing to worry about social distancing, spreading the virus to the workers or, counteractively, getting the virus from them. Even if mail workers did accompany the autonomous mail trucks, their work would be halved in intensity, since they would only have to sort and place mail in each resident’s mailbox, without needing to worry anymore about physically driving to every neighborhood that they serve. 

    Shifting Supplies from One Location to Another on Pedestrian-Free Routes 

    We’ve long considered autonomous vehicles to be an option to use in factories, truck yards and other less congested routes, primarily to move inventory to different locations. This is a great use for AVs since it involves minimal, if any, contact with humans or pedestrians, so it doesn’t pose a high risk for safety.

    The pandemic has raised a lot of new challenges to implementing this idea across the board, in terms of the inability to commit much time at all to these efforts at the current moment, as well as the difficulty in monitoring test vehicles within facilities with very few workers on site to overview the actual process.

    Despite these challenges, Phantom Auto, an automotive safety solutions company based in California, recently announced their decision to deploy their new driverless trucks — which they call productivity vehicles — across their truck yards to load/unload inventory on their own, without needing a worker to drive the trucks. Phantom Auto calls these trucks “almost” autonomous in terms of their navigational capabilities, since they may still need a little input from remote workers to guide them to the right docking/undocking locations within the yard, but the workers do not have to be physically present on site or inside the vehicle to drive it over themselves.

    This is possible due to new technology called HILT (Human in the Loop Technology), a telecommunication software advancement that allows telemonitoring, remote assistance and, in emergency scenarios, teledriving performed by a worker remotely. Performing these labor-intensive tasks autonomously during normal times would be a great relief on workload for workers employed at truck yards, but during this crisis, this is an absolutely essential step that more factories and truck yards should invest time and efforts on, in order to prevent the spread of the virus amongst their workers.

    Mayo Clinic, an American non-profit organization and academic medical center, has also been working to get coronavirus tests and medical supplies delivered to hospitals on pedestrian-free routes in Jacksonville, FL, to prevent workers from getting exposed to the virus. The driverless vehicles being used to transport these supplies are autonomous shuttles from Beep, Mayo Clinic’s new corporate partner from early April of this year.

    Currently, about four of these shuttles are working independently on different routes in the Jacksonville area, while being monitored by Beep, Mayo Clinic and the Jacksonville Transport Authority Officials, to ensure that the vehicles don’t steer off route. With these constraints and monitoring methods in place, autonomous vehicles can be deployed across a variety of platforms to perform simple, supply shifting tasks that human workers have been undertaking in addition to their primary responsibilities for years, during the crisis and post-pandemic.

    Everything Considered…

    With their day to day work and responsibilities increasing multifold during the pandemic, frontline workers have been doing a lot of overtime, not being able to spend time with their families during and further exposing themselves and their families to the virus, so that the majority of us can stay safe at home and still get our necessities delivered to us. It’s now time for technology to take over, and one possible solution to help ease their work is automating tasks that are laborious, such as grocery and mail delivery, supply shifting, etc.

    Autonomous vehicles that have already been approved for deployment, or in the final stages of testing, can help with performing these tasks since they don’t require a driver. These vehicles can be supervised by a physically present or remote worker to ensure that they follow the right routes and operate at the appropriate speeds

    A few firms have already started taking the initiative of deploying these vehicles to help prevent the spread of the virus amongst their workers and customers, and are witnesses to the overall simplification and ease of the automated process over the manual labor that they had originally employed. The shift to a more automated future that we had originally planned at the end of 2021 should start when we need it most, which is during this time of crisis. So, at this time, are we willing to make the change and invest more efforts in developing and testing autonomous vehicles to perform our everyday tasks?

  • Unlocking Enterprise Blockchain Potential with Low-Code Capabilities

    Unlocking Enterprise Blockchain Potential with Low-Code Capabilities

    Since the rise of Bitcoin more than a decade ago, companies have been trying to harness the potential of blockchain technology for enterprise applications. Industries that used to operate in silos are becoming increasingly connected, and the lines of where one ecosystem ends and another begins are blurring. In this connected age, blockchain can provide organizations with new opportunities to share and collaborate with their partners, other industry-players, government organizations and even academia. 

    On a more tangible front, integration would ultimately help establish new end-customer experience possibilities and establish new revenue streams. Especially, as we continue to navigate forward in the midst of COVID-19, enterprises are looking for innovative ways to adapt their business to best operate in the new world. Beyond that, supply chain operations are more critical than ever before. Across industries, maintaining a steady flow of essential goods, protective equipment and much more is critical to the health and safety of our frontline workers. Blockchain can help manage this flow and mitigate risks, helping deliver on that need for instant agile flexibility.

    Understanding the Opportunities

    Use cases are innumerable and it’s impossible to ignore the ongoing COVID-19 crisis as we discuss the potential applications for any technology. In the short-term, blockchain provides an added layer of transparency and data accuracy — minimizing the risk for any potential fallout from supply and value chain disruption during this time. With this transparency and data accuracy comes improved tracking of important supplies and materials such as PPE and ventilators, streamlined patient consent and triage capabilities for overwhelmed hospital staff and much more.

    With that, the applications will only continue to expand as industry operations return to normal in the hopefully-near future. Government agencies can develop a seamless international credit bureau, for example. As it stands, different countries have different processes and standards for credit scores or distribution of stimulus funding. With blockchain, governments could potentially develop a universal credit system that allows for international travelers and frequent movers to reap the benefits of their positive credit scores, no matter where they are. 

    Manufacturers can use blockchain to truly optimize their supply chain operations — understanding as much information about a purchase order throughout the lifecycle of a product or part. Take a heavy equipment manufacturer, for example. Blockchain provides access to data that will allow them to understand how their equipment is being used by their customers, when each particular piece of machinery will need maintenance, how to optimize predictive and emergency repair and replacement services, and more — all while understanding and contextualizing what the impact of these external operations will have on its own internal supply chain as well. In today’s world, this information is especially valuable for manufacturers who are shifting their focus to help support the development of PPE and other COVID-19 response essentials.

    Within banking and financial services, cross-bank and cross-border transfers are exponentially streamlined with blockchain integration. Instead of requiring validation and authentication from intermediaries, blockchain allows for instant transfers, with the same level of security and assurance. From a functionality standpoint, this also brings an added layer of convenience for both the end-user and the banks involved. These same conveniences provide a crucial layer of service during times of crisis as well. Through blockchain integration, stimulus allocation can be instantly approved and deposited into bank accounts for all citizens, regardless of existing banking preferences like direct deposit.

    Similarly, in the education sector, blockchain can make it easier for student records to be transferred between universities and other academic institutions — whether a student plans to transfer a few credits, transfer full-time or study abroad. 

    These are just a few of the many use cases for enterprise blockchain. So, what’s keeping them from becoming mainstream?

    Acknowledging the Barriers of Entry

    While the benefits are undeniable, adoption has been slow. But there is definitely interest, and adoption can soon surge. Gartner reported back in 2018 that business value added by blockchain adoption is projected to reach a whopping $3.1 trillion by 2030. But, only 10% of businesses will undergo radical blockchain-driven transformation by 2022. 

    Why is adoption slow to start? Companies are dipping their toes into the water, but studies have shown that a majority of enterprises are holding back due to regulatory uncertainty (48%), trust issues (45%) and an inability to bring partners together to build a network (44%). Other studies have reported that the “very high” difficulty in platform selection, a lack of in-house expertise on use case development and questions about privacy are the top barriers of entry. 

    What will change between now and 2030? How will these concerns be directly addressed? To answer this, it is important to note that these barriers of entry derive from a lack of foundational understanding of blockchain. More education will come, and more experts will rise. That said, integration doesn’t happen overnight. Blockchain, like any other emerging technology, takes time to integrate at scale.

    It’s understandable why companies are hesitant to go all in at the moment — as organizations are often strapped for resources, and the talent that is needed to build a blockchain platform from scratch is hard to come by. That said, those who don’t invest early are likely to be left behind by thriving early-adopters. Luckily, there is a solution to the challenges that are holding adoption back — one that takes away the need for resource expenditure and dedicated developer teams.

    Leveraging Low-Code

    Low-code development platforms allow enterprises to reap the benefits of complex code, without the need to dedicate valuable time and resources toward development from the ground-up. “Plug and play” customization allows them to address specific needs within their organization, and prioritize implementation on a smaller scale without the stress of diving head-first into an infrastructural overhaul. 

    Especially during our ongoing COVID-19 crisis, low-code eliminates the need for large dev teams to develop new software applications, allowing for a streamlined, timely transition as organizations dedicate their valuable resources elsewhere to help minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 on their workforce and their surrounding communities.

    Beyond this epidemic, these benefits provide risk-averse C-level decision makers with an easy and confident investment opportunity, as well as disruptive tools that deliver on the growing need for constant innovation — in an era where agility and digital transformation are now a necessity. In fact, the main reasoning behind an organization’s low-code adoption is to accelerate said digital transformation and increase responsiveness to the business (66%, respectively).  

    Low-code directly addresses the aforementioned barriers of entry that come with blockchain investment — or any complex, resource-dependent software investment for that matter. With low-code, even non-developers can build high-tech applications. Devs are often expensive and good talent is often hard to come by. Because of this, the ability to get the same quality output with minimal input is extremely valuable.

    Beyond the simple cost and scarcity of good talent, dev teams often have significant backlogs, which make it hard for them to keep up with industry and business demands. There are benefits of having a non-developer heavily ingrained in the development process as well, as they will have an overall better understanding of the function that the application will serve, and how it fits into the overall business structure.

    Bridging Together Low-Code and Blockchain

    Upon evaluation of the barriers of entry that keep blockchain from widespread adoption, as well as the glaring benefits that low-code programming brings to enterprises with limited resources and talent, the potential for low-code blockchain to minimize enterprise concerns and justify investment is obvious.

    By reducing the need for dedicated network developers that would originally be required to build the blockchain platform from the ground-up, enterprises can build and maintain a trusted network with clicks, not code. Users will be able to create and share blockchain objects with familiar functionality — essentially interacting with the platform in the same way they would interact with any CRM data object.

    The simplicity and ease of use of low-code blockchain makes it so that trusted networks can grow organically, faster. Integration across the entire partner network is simple and can be completed with just a few clicks — making it easier to bring new third-parties on board to join the trusted network, ultimately making the blockchain platform and user network exponentially more valuable in the long-term.

    Blockchain adoption will undoubtedly pick up steam, aided by the low-code capabilities that now exist. The minimized risk and resource expenditure that comes with low-code will make blockchain adoption much more appealing to those who are currently skeptical. Additionally, once low-code serves as the entry-point for enterprise adoption, organizations will begin to expand upon the capabilities of their own blockchain networks — and ultimately drive further innovation. 

    Eventually, we’ll see new ecosystem partnerships forming, and end-customer experiences improving. Early leaders will become more comfortable with the idea of experimenting with new, previously unimaginable use cases of their own.

    Looking Ahead to 2030

    We are approaching a turning point with blockchain in the enterprise. Low-code development platforms will provide enterprises with the opportunity to adopt blockchain technology with minimal risk and proven ROI. As more enterprises build trusted networks through low-code blockchain, industry-agnostic innovation will elevate all participating organizations and deliver truly exceptional results — for both, the network partners and their end-customers as well. 

    The blockchain hype is justified. We have been searching for a way to manifest its potential without over-complicating the process of bringing it to life. Low-code does just this, without fault.

  • Best Practices for Remote IT Management

    Best Practices for Remote IT Management

    As companies adjust to the new normal of a completely remote workforce, IT teams still struggle to maintain productivity and workflows, meaning DevOps practices have never been more of an asset. IT teams must be more agile and efficient to manage their IT infrastructure from remote locations; otherwise, confusion and errors can ensue at a moment’s notice. 

    To ensure IT teams remain efficient and thrive in a collaborative, open culture, there are several steps that companies can take now to cultivate an innovative environment long after COVID-19 is over.

    Implementing “Game Day-Style” Practices

    In theory, “game day-style” practices are probably one of the best ways to ensure teams are ready for any remote work. This involves companies having IT teams work remotely as a test run, and then reporting problems early and often to avoid issues when everyone needs to be remote. Unfortunately, we’re well past this, which means that it’s now up to teams to communicate early and often. Breaking down siloed work environments, while creating open dialogue up and down the leadership chain, can go a long way. Naturally, connectivity is also a key factor here. With communication and connectivity at the core, companies can more easily assemble and designate teams for specific issues.

    This does, though, depend on the encouragement of company leadership, with senior decision-making being integral to the IT team’s success.

    Identifying a Trusted Team Leader

    An enterprise’s IT director or manager requires substantial expertise, true empathy and effective communication. Not with a command-and-control approach, but rather one that supports people by helping to facilitate communications and working to remove impediments without micromanaging.

    However, the most important condition for a director or manager is their own aptitude for working remotely as they must always maintain a high degree of diligence. Their communication and guidance reflect their leadership as well as strengthen the IT team’s capabilities.

    Directors or managers must ensure there is seamless coordination, strengthening cohesion between each team and reducing the number of dependencies. A DevOps approach is instrumental as it entails mechanisms such as version control, automated testing and deployment, ultimately creating autonomous, resourceful teams. Additionally, directors or managers can develop a methodology for pinpointing conflicts and enhancing synergy within IT teams. As a result, when working remotely, IT teams can operate at maximum efficiency and maintain high levels of productivity.

    The Components for Maximum Productivity

    With IT teams working in different locations, productivity and workflow are likely to be strained, especially with the current crisis. To counter this, IT teams have adopted collaboration tools to interact with one another, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom. These three platforms have seen a massive uptick in users:

    • Microsoft Teams has a total of 44 million daily active users.
    • Slack added 9,000 new paid customers, having over 12 million daily active users.
    • Zoom has a total of 300 million daily active users.

    While not any one platform is better than the other, it’s important to create the conditions for autonomous, empowered teams. This is where making the most of tools, such as version control, automated testing and other aspects of a good DevOps approach to software development and deployment, come into play. You not only have to manage the teams and their deliverables, but you have to ensure that you have a methodology that quickly identifies when they’re creating conflicts for one another. IT teams should select which is easiest to use and best satisfies their needs. Effective communication is the objective as using multiple messaging channels can cause confusion or reduce any likelihood of productivity.

    Communication Is Key

    Clear and consistent communication is the key to an IT team’s success as members must know what’s happening at all times, including the project’s current status and necessary components, assigned roles and responsibilities, and the overall goals and expectations of the project.

    The enemy of communication is assumption, which can harm an entire group’s synergy and productivity. For example, you assume that the software will simply work as intended, or you assume delivery will happen on time regardless of the project’s timeline.

    Assumption guarantees a project’s failure, which is why it is important to outline everything about the project, both the tangible and intangible.

    Never Forget About the People

    Companies, large and small, need to foster an environment exuding collaboration, communication and good will, which causes IT teams to flourish and grow. Given the current crisis, some companies are taking several measures to ensure that morale remains consistently high among all employees. This means investing time and effort into team-building or team-bonding activities such as virtual coffee breaks, lunches via Skype or Zoom, or even games.

    There is much fear surrounding COVID-19 and companies must prioritize each employee’s well-being, including routine check-ins, team or staff meetings and 1:1 time with managers to ensure that the health and safety of employees is kept at the forefront of decision making.  Creating an inclusive atmosphere also helps remind IT teams that they can depend on one another and are part of a larger community, regardless of the distance.

    The Common Denominator

    Most importantly, for all of the above to work, teams must rely on one underlying element: communication. It is virtually impossible for remote IT management to thrive without clear communication between individuals and their teams. Furthermore, there is the possibility that IT teams will adopt this remote lifestyle permanently once COVID-19 subsides. If so, companies must implement these best practices to ensure their growth and longevity as they will encounter more complex, demanding assignments from others.

  • Coronavirus Impact: Enterprises Must Focus on What Works

    Coronavirus Impact: Enterprises Must Focus on What Works

    As the economic slowdown continues, CIOs, CFOs and enterprise technology teams continue to grapple with frozen budgets and how their enterprise will keep their operations functioning as they attempt to move forward with crucial digital transformation efforts, and possibly shelve those initiatives deemed less critical.

    How are CIOs deciding what projects get postponed? Many projects underway now are focused on business continuity and supporting remote work, but that can’t be the only focus for CIOs and enterprise technology leaders.

    Miles Ward, CTO at business-technology consultancy SADA Systems, said there is a substantial shift to enable staff to productively work from home, increase flexibility in spending and to automate operations, and rely increasingly on managed services so that demands on operations personnel are reduced.

    “Projects outside of those focus areas are going to get deprioritized unless they’re in the very final stages of delivery, where stopping creates more waste than it could prevent,” said Ward.

    According to a recent survey from Dresner Advisory Services, 61% of respondents said projects and budgets will be impacted by the pandemic, with sizable majorities reporting the same in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and North America. The biggest impacts are expected to be in operations (manufacturing, supply chain, services) at 89%, executive management at 83%, marketing at 75%, finance at 65%, IT at 60%, research and development at 60% and business intelligence at 56%.

    Dresner Advisory Services found that those organizations with more than 5,000 employees expect the lowest level of impact, while organizations with 1,001 to 5,000 reported the highest level of impact.

    Jarod Greene, general manager at the Technology Business Management Council, said a great amount of uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 remains, including the rippling health, economic and business impact. It all presents an incredible challenge for all business leaders.

    “CIOs and other IT leaders, specifically, are in the thick of this challenge, [and they are] not only responsible for maintaining the continuity of operations and seamless work experiences but also factoring in the short-, mid- and long-term financial impact of their decisions,” said Greene.

    Greene contended that CIOs play a vital role in times like these, and that they can help organizations to clearly understand the costs and corresponding value of their technology investments, and therefore can advise business leaders of informed tradeoffs, rather than merely widespread cuts.

    “Conversations I’ve had with Technology Business Management Council members over the past days and weeks have focused on re-planning and forecasting and the execution cost optimization exercises—with the ability to measure the impact of those decisions,” said Greene.

    Time to Invest in Measurable Impact

    For many organizations, the focus has shifted to delivering improved technology experiences to customers.

    “The dot-com bubble burst and 9/11 may seem like ancient history to some. These were events that forced businesses to focus on what’s really important: providing value to customers and investing in projects with measurable impact on revenue and cash flow,” said Vaclav Vincalek, partner at business-technology consultancy Future Infinitive.

    “The cash shortage refocused management teams on what was vital for their businesses. The current situation will be no different. Business will have to adapt to a new environment and adapt quickly. Companies with well-planned strategies will adjust some tactics. If they’ve already planned for change and aligned with their vision, they’ll continue to succeed with focused execution,” said Vincalek.

    Alex Miłowski, platforms researcher and evangelist at Redis Labs, agreed.

    “Essential services, especially customer-facing communications systems, are likely to face surges in demand. As such, it is important to meet those demands rather than pull back and postpone,” said Miłowski.

    “It very much depends upon what type of business you are in. It’s not all doom and gloom. It hasn’t been for us, or for many of our customers,” added Kevin Grice, director of digital transformation at Trace Solutions. “That said, I think it’s a fair assumption that there will be widening ripple effects through all parts of the economy—so there are likely to be challenges ahead. How big the ripples are, and how long they last, is yet to be seen.”

    “Many companies have gone into a temporary lockdown, with a freeze on all development to reduce risk and the possibility of additional costs in a time of reduced cashflow. However, if this emergency goes on for any significant length of time, that approach will soon become unviable. So businesses will have to adapt,” said Grice.

    Not all companies have retrenched and have decided to keep moving forward with investments.

    “At Laserfiche, we currently do not have any projects on hold, rather, we are working to accelerate any [projects] that are related to business process automation as it helps the workforce. Content management and automation will continue to lead upcoming projects. As IT leaders, we have a responsibility to get things scaled quickly. The challenge we have is being agile and adapting to our ‘new normal,’ but we’re continuing to move forward,” said Thomas Phelps, Laserfiche’s CIO.

    Laserfiche isn’t the only company that has decided to keep moving forward. A survey of 317 CFOs, from research firm Gartner, found that 38% of those surveyed don’t have any plans to cut costs, and only 16% of CFOs said they plan to cut IT by more than 10%.

    What does Gartner advise enterprises do? Essentially, to do what they are doing: focusing more on what works and cutting the deadweight.

    “Where there is excess scope in their organization’s product or service portfolios, the hidden costs of complexity drag down profitability,” Dennis Gannon vice president, advisory at the Gartner’s finance practice said in this statement. “The best CFOs will use COVID-19 as the catalyst to derive significant operating leverage from their most profitable lines of business without destroying value.”