Over the last ten years, the activity of companies has changed radically. The penetration of a new digital approach into everyday life has shaped a new way of organizing the day of users and citizens, moving it to a much higher level than in the past.
Just think of how direct messaging systems, mobile diaries, and buying and selling systems that also include home delivery or click & collect with in-store pickup (or in dedicated lockers) have gained traction.
This infrastructural and social transformation has required a new approach to the organization of ICT technology: we are experiencing the so-called digital transformation.
This term, often used only with a strictly marketing connotation, actually indicates something deeper than a commercial formula.
Before, society was analogue and ICT was a possibility, certainly the best but not the only one, to develop a business.
Today, society is digital, and with it, citizen services, organizations, and factories, and ICT is not only essential, but also constantly moving toward excellence.
Those who don’t update will quickly find themselves at the bottom of the rankings.
Business is therefore digital and opportunities must be sought in this area. Fortunately, today’s technologies offer numerous paths of excellence that revolve around a better division between repetitive tasks and competitive advantages.
These two forces generate a driving torque that initiates a continuous improvement in company quality. Identifying repetitive tasks and making them automatic is a great achievement of modern ICT.
If a company has its own history, it certainly has business systems based on traditional ICT, with monolithic applications, IT operations separate from development, and difficulty integrating skills previously considered separate, such as security or AI/ML.
Under these conditions, separating repetitive operations from creative ones is very difficult and still leads to slow results, poorly integrated and poorly aimed at continuous improvement of skills.
IT Automation Unleashes Business Potential
Another approach is available today for all new stages of development, based on ICT automation.
This new approach is the only choice for companies that are born today, and it is also essential for historic companies that must get there by integrating over time the pre-existing heritage (including ICT staff) with the newly developed one, better still if with the advisory support of experts.
IT automation is therefore the first objective, the one on which to build the final result.
Software development today takes place in the cloud, which also hosts much of the company’s software and data. Operating in the cloud is already a first level of automation of operations, since the infrastructure functions are taken care of by the cloud provider.
Very large companies can have some of the software or data at home and will likely manage it with a private cloud, taking advantage of a highly automated overall model called hybrid cloud.
DevOps approach to improve results and skills
Going into more detail, today’s software requires a structuring for small units of code, microservices, which can be developed with any of the development technologies available today. Depending on the environment and specific use, these code units are also referred to as functions or APIs.
Developing for microservices adopts the DevOps philosophy, which indicates the fusion of development and operations functions into a single production cycle based on continuous releases of small changes that keep the information system functioning and facilitate the integration of skills between staff.
Consider security, now finally seen as a cornerstone, which DevOps developers are gradually trained in through osmosis with specialized personnel, in order to achieve a unique approach called SecDevOps.
The DevOps model allows for the identification of a large number of automatable components, while also providing developers with the same environment that will be in the hands of the end user.
But there is more. When developing on microservices, the developer does not have to deal with the sizing of the infrastructure, either initially, or whether it needs to scale up or down, or whether it needs to be replicated.
The infrastructure is managed virtually through containerization approaches to execution, which can scale upward through additional forms of automation such as choreography or orchestration.
The search for automation is an ongoing process. The company that adopts this approach releases vital energy in the development area, continuously improving and updating its skills.
As an end result, the best energies go into the truly creative part of development, which creates a strong competitive advantage in an age of digital business opportunities.