Posts Tagged ‘Disruption’
Code2Cloud: Bigger than a Disruption in ALM
Update, October 22, 2010: Watch this excellent demo of Code2Cloud!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALM.svg
Figure 1: A Representation of the Application Lifecycle Management Concepts
VMware’s Code2Cloud announcement a couple of days ago is intriguing. According to this announcement, the whole development infrastructure is delivered as a service with no setup, no hardware or software to manage. The tedious and time consuming task of setting (and as appropriate modifying) the environment within which coding is carried out is done by Code2Cloud, not by the programming/testing team. As pointed out by colleague and friend Michael Cote, Code2Cloud might have the potential to be quite a disruption in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM):
“The software development tool chain has always been tedious to setup and integrate,” said Red Monk analyst Michael Cote. “While cloud-based development promises to make application delivery, deployment, and use easier, I haven’t seen excellent unified application management approaches that take full advantage of cloud. VMware’s SpringSource Code2Cloud is an ambitious step towards moving much of the development management stack into the cloud and hopefully vacuuming up those tedious application management tasks. It’ll be fun to watch this idea evolve as more and more people and applications start taking advantage of cloud computing.”
Important that such a disruption in the ALM space might be, I believe the main significance of the Code2Cloud announcement is in demonstrating so vividly how powerful the Everything as a Service (EaaS) paradigm could be and probably will be. IMHO Code2Cloud is another proof point to the power of the confluence of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social. It is a virtuous cycle of unprecedented impact – in technology delivery, in the structure of markets, in society and in the patterns of living we are accustomed to.
© Copyright 2010 Israel Gat
Figure 2: The Virtuous Cycle of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social
The Code2Cloud announcement is primarily about the {Agile –> Cloud} link in Figure 2. The {Cloud –> Mobile}, {Mobile –> Social} and {Social –> Agile} are just as powerful. For example, the {Social –> Agile} link, in conjunction with Cloud and Mobile, opens the door for highly efficient Testing as a Service.
Think of the Code2Cloud as a great example of Everything as a Service. Many other examples of such services are forthcoming. The common denominator of all these examples to come is their transformative power. Not in the tactical sense of “transformative”, but in the deep strategic meaning of the word.
Action item: Start a pilot to evaluate Code2Cloud. Expand rapidly if it meets your development needs. Tie at the earliest point in time to your plans for application delivery, deployment and use in the cloud.
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Wrestling with governing your software from a lifcycle perspective? Let me know if you would like assistance in implementing a simple yet highly effective software governance framework that can be used by both technical and non-technical members of your staff. Click Services for details and contact information.
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The Supply Side of the Consumerization of Enterprise Software
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertboerland/2944895894/
In my recent post about the consumerization of enterprise software I discussed two factors that are likely to accelerate the pace toward such consumerization:
- Any department/business unit that can get a service in entirety from an outside source is likely to do so without worrying about enterprise software and/or data center considerations. This is already happening in Marketing. As other functions start doing so, more and more links in the value chain of enterprise software will be “consumerized.” In other words, these services will be carried out without the involvement of the IT department.
- Once the switch-over costs from legacy code to state-of-the-art code are less than the steady state costs (to maintain and update legacy code), the “consumerization” of enterprise software is going to happen with ferocious urgency.
In this post I would like to add a third factor – the buying pattern. My contention is that the buying pattern for micro-apps will spread to enterprise application. Potential demand for buying in this way is huge. Supply for buying enterprise software as micros-apps is not quite there yet, but it would take only one smart vendor to start transforming the traditional pattern how enterprise software is chunked, offered and sold.
Think about your recent experience downloading an application to your smart mobile phone. You did not go through a six-month evaluation period; you did not do a comprehensive competitive analysis; you did not check how well the seller does customer support in Sumatra. You simply paid something like $7.99 and downloaded the application. You are more than happy if it fulfills your needs in a reasonable manner. If it does not, you simply buy another application with the functionality you desire. Maybe you are a little more cautious now and ask a friend or send an inquiry to your Twitter followers before you pick the new application. Whatever you might choose to do, the fundamental facts are: A) you can afford to lose $7.99; and, B) your time is more precious than the sunk cost of the application. You simply move on.
This buying pattern is not something that you are going to forget when you step into your office in the morning. It makes perfect sense to you and it would be good for your company. You would rather concentrate on your business than on the tricky language of clause number 734 in the contract that your department’s attorney prepared for licensing yet another piece of enterprise software.
The ‘$7.99 experience’ you and zillion other folks like you had over the past week or the past month makes enterprise software vendors extremely vulnerable. The “high-touch; high-margin; high-commitment” [1] business design is not sustainable once the purchase model changes. The expensive machinery of professional services, system engineering and customer support is not affordable at the face of competition that constructs modular chunks of enterprise software and sells them at a price the customer can afford to write off (if they do not perform to satisfaction). Maybe the ceiling in the enterprise to ‘forget about this application and move on’ is no higher than $1,000 (instead of ‘no higher than $7.99’ for the private citizen), but a smart vendor can still make a lot of money on selling at one thousand dollars a pop to the enterprise.
The growing gap between “this lovely application on my iPhone” and the “headache of licensing traditional enterprise software” is an immense incentive for up-and-coming software vendors to use the ‘$7.99 experience’ as the heart of a new business design. This new business design can be simply summarized as “low-touch; low-margin; low commitment” [2]. And, yes, it is very disruptive to the incumbents…
My hunch is that the IT Service Management (ITSM) industry will be the first to crumble. The premise of “service delivery” sounds a little hollow in a cloud computing world characterized by “everything as a service” [3]. Would a buyer be really willing to pay for “service for the service” from a vendor who does not actually provide the underlying service?! It sounds like paying a Fidelity or a Vanguard investment manager to manage a portfolio of their own mutual funds for you…
All it takes for this shift to start – in ITSM or in another part of enterprise software – is one successful vendor.
Footnotes:
[1] I am indebted to Annie Shum for this phrase.
[2] Ibid.
[3] I am indebted to Russ Daniels for this phrase.
This is Not a “Me Too” Product
I had the distinct pleasure to discuss AgileEVM over dinner yesterday with its two “fathers” – Chris Sterling and Brent Barton. I was much impressed by the originality of the concept, the clear differentiation of the product and the laser focus on Earned Value Management (EVM) aspects.
Governance of the software development process is a topic that has been much discussed in various Cutter publications – see for example recent Cutter blog posts by Stephen Andriole, Robert Charette, Jim Highsmith, Vince Kellen, Masa Maeda, Michael Mah and me. Chris and Brent add a layer of EVM – both in terms of theoretical foundations and actual tool – to our spectrum of thoughts on governance. IMHO AgileEVM has the potential to induce a disruption in the way companies go about the business of governing software.
AgileEVM is particularly intriguing as a {product + professional services} combo. Chris and Brent are well-known as awesome Agile consultants. The opportunity to pick their brains twice – once through the product, a second time through a related consulting engagement with them – is most attractive.
The two “pages” below give a sense of the power of the product. Even better, simply download the product through the AgileEVM website.
Grab Chris or Brent for a 1-1 demo if you are at Agile 2010 this week. You will not be disappointed…
As If Another Proof Point Was Needed
Annie Shum’s interview earlier this week gave readers of this blog a multi-dimensional view of imminent changes in IT. If you needed independent validation, it came yesterday through EMC’s Chuck Hollis words in the national solution provider GreenPages Technology Solutions’ 14th annual summit:
Vice President Global Marketing CTO Chuck Hollis Monday said the changes resulting from the storage giant’s own no-holds barred journey to the private cloud led to a decline in IT employee job satisfaction…
Hollis said the internal IT satisfaction drop came in the second phase of the EMC cloud revolution focused squarely on mission critical applications. That second phase — which EMC is in the midst of now — has sparked major changes in IT jobs as the company has replaced IT management, security staff and backend IT staff.
“During this phase, this is where org (organizational) chart issues started to come in,” Hollis said. “People’s jobs started to change. Younger people in the organization were being promoted over older people.”
As if another proof point to add to Annie‘s rigorous data was needed…
Cloud Computing Forecasts: “Cloudy” Future for Enterprise IT
In a comment on The Urgency of Now, Marcel Den Hartog discusses technology assimilation in the face of hype:
But if people are already reluctant to run the things they have, on another platform they already have, on an operating system they are already familiar with (Linux on zSeries), how can you expect them to even look at cloud computing seriously? Every technological advancement requires people to adapt and change. Human nature is that we don’t like that, so it often requires a disaster to change our behavior. Or carefully planned steps to prove and convince people. However, nothing makes IT people more cautious than a hype. And that is how cloud is perceived. When the press, the analysts and the industry start writing about cloud as part of the IT solution, people will want to change. Now that it’s presented as the silver bullet to all IT problems, people are cautious to say the least.
Here is Annie Shum‘s thoughtful reply to Marcel’s comment:
Today, the Cloud era has only just begun. Despite lingering doubts, growing concerns and wide-spread confusion (especially separating media and vendor spun hype from reality), the IT industry generally views Cloud Computing as more appealing than traditional ASP /hosting or outsourcing/off-shoring. To technology-centric startups and nimble entrepreneurs, Cloud Computing enables them to punch above their weight class. By turning up-front CapEx into a more scalable and variable cost structure based on an on-demand pay-as-you-go model, Cloud Computing can provide a temporary, level playing field. Similarly, many budget-constrained and cash-strapped organizations also look to Cloud Computing for immediate (friction-free) access to “unlimited” computing resources. To wit: Cloud Computing may be considered as a utility-based alternative to an on-premises datacenter and allow an organization (notably cash-strapped startups) to “Think like a ‘big guy’. Pay like a ‘little guy’ ”.
Forward-thinking organizations should not lose sight of the vast potential of Cloud Computing that extends well beyond short-term economics. At its core, Cloud Computing is about enabling business agility and connectivity by abstracting computing infrastructure via a new set of flexible service delivery/deployment models. Harvard Business School Professor Andrew McAffee painted a “Cloudy” future for Corporate IT in his August 21, 2009 blog and cited a perceptive 1983 paper by Warren D. Devine, Jr. in the Journal of Economic History called “From Shafts to Wires: Historical Perspective on Electrification”.[1] There are three key take-away messages that resonate with the current Cloud Computing paradigm shift. First: The real impact of the new technology was not apparent right away. Second: The transition to full utilization of the new technology will be long, but inevitable. Third: There will be detractors and skeptics about the new technology throughout the transition. Interestingly, telephone is another groundbreaking disruptive technology that might have faced similar skepticism in the beginning. Legend has it that a Western Union internal memo dated 1876 downplayed the viability of the telephone: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
The dominance of Cloud Computing as a computing platform, however, is far from a fait accompli. Nor will it ever be complete, a “one-size fits all” or a “big and overnight switch”. The shape of computing is constantly changing but it is always a blended and gradual transition, analogous to a modern city. While the cityscape continues to change, a complete “rip-and-replace” overhaul is rarely feasible or cost-effective. Instead, city planners generally preserve legacy structures although some of them are retrofitted with standards-based interfaces that enable them to connect to the shared infrastructure of the city. For example, the Paris city planners retrofitted Notre Dame with facilities such as electricity, water, and plumbing. Similarly, despite the passage of the last three computing paradigm shifts – first mainframe, next Client/Server and PCs, and then Web N-tier – they all co-exist and can be expected to continue in the future. Consider the following. Major shares of mission-critical business applications are running today on mainframe servers. Through application modernization, legacy applications – notably Cobol for example – now can operate in a Web 2.0 environment as well as deploy in the Cloud via the Amazon EC2 platform.
Cloud Computing can provide great appeal to a wide swath of organizations spanning startups, SMBs, ISVs, enterprise IT and government agencies. The most commonly cited benefits include the promise of avoiding CapEx and lowering TCO to on-demand elasticity, immediacy and ease of deployment, time to value, location independence and catalyzing innovation. However, there is no magic in the Cloud and it is certainly not a panacea for all IT woes. Some applications are not “Cloud-friendly”. While deploying applications in the Cloud can enable business agility incrementally, such deployment will not change the characteristics of the applications fundamentally to be highly scalable, flexible and automatically responsive to new business requirements. Realistically, one must recognize that the many of the challenging problems – security, data integration and service interoperability in particular – will persist and live on regardless of the computing delivery medium: Cloud, hosted or on-premises.
[1] “The author combed through the contemporaneous business and technology press to learn what ‘experts’ were saying as manufacturing switched over from steam to electrical power, a process that took about 50 years to complete.” – Andrew McAfee, September 21, 2009.
I will go one step further and add quality to Annie’s list of challenging problem. A crappy on-premises application will continue to be crappy in the cloud. An audit of the technical debt should be conducted before “clouding” an application. See Technical Debt on Your Balance Sheet for a recommendation on quantifying the results of the quality audit.
The Case for Agile Business Service Management
BSM Review has just published my article The Case for Agile Business Service Management. Here is a key para from the article:
During turbulent times such as the past year, Agile business service management enables the business to become more competitive by speeding up the pace of delivery of new functionality and accommodating changes in business requirements as part of standard operating procedures. Like a computer chess program that extends clever tactics into the strategic realm [The New Yorker 2005], it compensates for the lack of prolonged periods of techno-economic stability through business Agility, substituting speed, flexibility and momentum for traditional long range planning. It is particularly noteworthy that Agile business service management applies equally well to companies pursuing adaptive strategies as to those betting on shaping strategies [Hagel et al 2008].
As indicated in a previous post, the article outlines the research agenda I will be pursuing. Specifically:
- How is agile BSM implemented and delivered? …measured?
- What are the benefits of agile BSM to the business objectives of development? …ops? …test?
- Who carriers responsibility for agile BSM delivery and implementation?
- Who benefits from agile BSM delivery & implementation?
- How are these benefits applied?
- When is Agile BSM expected to be understood and accepted by the business entities?
- Where is agile BSM likely to be wholeheartedly implemented first?
- What is the impact of Agile BSM on ISV’s (as distinct from IT “shops”)?
Listeners to Live Recording of Four Principles, Four Culture, One Mirror are well aware of my view of scaling downstream – it is the most tricky of the three dimensions of Agile scaling (up, out, downstream). IMHO Agile BSM is the first step toward effective scaling downstream.
Only 10%
Readers of the posts Customer Intimacy and Enterprise Software Innovator’s Dilemma might recall two observations made in this blog:
- The dissatisfactory state of affairs in enterprise software as characterized by Crawford and Mathews in their description of Consumer Underworld relationship between vendor and customer:
Ignore my needs… Be inconsistent, unclear, or misleading in your pricing… Offer me poor quality merchandise and services that I can’t use… Give me a reason to tell my friends and relatives to stay away…
- The potential of Open Source Software to become a disruptive technology in the sense articulated by Christensen:
Open Source Software is becoming ”good enough”. It has already met or will soon be meeting the minimum requirements of the enterprise customer. By so doing, Open Source Software will steadily gain ground from traditional enterprise software vendors
In a Viewpoint published in the July 2 issue of BusinessWeek, former Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff cites the following statistics:
… only 10% of Americans now saying they trust large corporations, according to the Apr. 8 edition of the Financial Trust Index. Some 77% of Americans say they refuse to buy products or services from a company they distrust, according to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer. [Highlights by IG].
The statistics given by Zuboff link the two observations cited above. One might argue that Crawford, Mathews and Zuboff deal primarily with consumer behavior, not with procurement of enterprise software. True that this argument might be, I sincerely doubt that the two worlds can be kept apart. At least some of the folks who license and use enterprise software must be represented in the data given by Zuboff and are likely to act accordingly in their corporate roles. Moreover, her statistics seem to be quite consistent with the recent warning to high-tech issued by Christensen:
If you’re curious to know what lies in store for Seattle and Silicon Valley, spend a day walking around Detroit with the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Confluence
The approach Eric Ries advocates for the Agile start-up has been covered in previous posts (click here and here). Basically, Ries sees the need to iterate on the customer problem alongside iterating on the solution to the problem. Furthermore, a process of discovery – finding the customer – accompanies iterations on the problem and on the solution.
In a note today entitled Three Designing Bears, Kent Beck brings up a great example for the approach Ries promotes:
[JUnit] Max is a bootstrapped product, so I need to find revenue as quickly as possible. I have no idea what people might actually pay for in a testing tool, so I need to try things as quickly as possible. Features only need to be finished enough to give me reliable feedback about their value. Will people pay for features like those? If so, I can afford to finish them later.
Various other threads are quite relevant to and consistent with the ideas of Ries and Beck. For example, commenting on Flickr in The Art of Agile Development, James Shore highlights their speedy {code –> test –> stage –> deploy} cycle:
When a user posts a bug to the forum, the team can often fix the problem and deploy the new code to the live site within minutes.
When coupled with “real time” user feedback, the confluence of speedy development with fast deployment reduces the risk of developing features that are never or seldom used. It applies to both start-ups and established enterprises. It opens the door for new software business designs that would have been considered infeasible just a few years ago. For example, one could enhance the Marauder Strategy (“seek out slow ships and take them out”) proposed by Jeff Sutherland by competing not “only” on velocity of development, but on accelerated deployment cycles and ultra-fast feedback loops.
Punching Above Your Weight Class
Authors Hagel, Brown and Davison use an interesting metaphor in a recent Harvard Business Review article on strategy in time of constant change:
Today’s new Digital infrastructure in fact gives relatively small actions and investments an impact disproportionate to their size. To use a boxing metaphor, companies can now punch above their weight class.
Compare the Digital infrastructure with traditional infrastructures such as water canals, railroads or highways. Unlike these classical means of communication and transportation, Software is unique in being integral part of the Digital infrastructure as well as being a major piece of what gets transported over the infrastructure. Best I know no other entity ever played such a dual role in as meaningful a manner.
The metaphorical punch Hagel, Brown and Davison use as an illustration for the leverage provided by the Digital infrastructure is particularly intriguing due to to the malleability of software. Delivery methods for products and services over the Digital infrastructure could evolve the way product feature and functions do. If the product continues to evolve after initial delivery, the opportunity presents itself to do Agile in the deep sense recently proposed in The Lean Startup: iterative customer development alongside Agile product development that includes iterating on the delivery method.
The Agile Executive 
