Platform standardisation is key to digital transformation

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While the private cloud has been the direction of choice for many organisations up to this point, mostly for security reasons, a new model is emerging that offers the best of both public and private without the requirement for a hybrid solution. Virtual private cloud, a solution increasingly offered by service providers, offers the flexibility and improved economies of scale of the public cloud and the security of the private cloud through a direct connection between the customer and the service provider. This enables organisations to finally move away from utilising capital to provision their IT environment, and leverage the benefits of operating on an Opex model. Benefits include immediate cost savings and lower total cost of ownership. In addition, moving IT onto an Opex model frees up capital to be utilised in areas that will add further business value, such as research and development, the customer experience or new products and services.

Ultimately the digital transformation of IT is about opening up new opportunities for business growth. This includes the ability to quickly access new markets with new products or services, which in turn requires IT to deliver solutions in a more agile manner with reduced time frames. This not only enables businesses to access new revenue streams faster, it allows them to reduce the cost of non-starter initiatives, as the investment into any new service or product is dramatically reduced both in terms of capital and time. In addition, organisations can turn IT infrastructure into a predictable cost that can be easily scaled up or down, turning the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of IT into a more manageable and realistic expense. By making the TCO more measurable, it is also possible to begin to visualise how IT as a whole is a service that adds significant business value.

The goal of digital transformation is to develop a behaviour-driven approach to the design and development of products and solutions. This requires an integrated approach, from advanced analytics filtering business requirements through to the technology stack, from the development phase into quality assurance and production, switching automatically to the next platform and step in the process.

The creation of a seamless process from conception to implementation enables new products and services to be rolled out in a matter of days or even hours. Utilising dynamic cloud-based infrastructure delivers the necessary agility to the provisioning process, which is the foundation for new product development. Return on investment can thus be capitalised quicker and solutions can be adapted on demand to customer requirements. In addition, areas that are not delivering value can quickly be removed from the portfolio to ensure spend is allocated where revenue can be maximised. However, this first and foremost requires standardisation at the platform level, to deliver the rich, seamless user experience required for agility and competitiveness in today’s market.

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