Saba

Metaverse: Virtual Becomes Real

2022-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Introduction

If the rapid innovations especially in the past few years are any indication, a slew of seemingly unrelated technological advances will alter the way we live, work, and play in the digital world.

Any change, big or small, is not the result of a single revolutionary or evolutionary development. Instead, it is the result of a complex and intricate network of interconnected advancements that work together.

The Internet’s ubiquity has altered how we bank, shop, socialize, work, listen to music, watch movies, order food, travel, or even find love! Technology behemoths such as Amazon, Google, Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, and Zoom have entered our everyday lexicon.

In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg introduced the term “metaverse” to the world while rechristening his company as Meta. While the erstwhile Facebook’s Meta does not yet enjoy the ubiquity of a Google or Zoom, it is perhaps only a matter of time before it does. Well, perhaps not.

Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson came up with the name Metaverse for a virtual world he imagined in his book. The dystopic futuristic novel paints a gloomy picture of an anarcho-capitalistic world that is run by huge private businesses. From the outset, centralized services governed by powerful corporations have been the very anathema of the premise of the Metaverse.

The Metaverse could be the next generation of our continuously evolving online experience and has even been called the “successor to the internet”. This post explores the various components that make up the Metaverse, and examines the current state of development, the significant players, future direction, challenges, and opportunity.

WHAT IS THE METAVERSE? A game? A social media platform? A cryptocurrency? Virtual reality? Web 3.0?

The metaverse means several things to several people; and that is because it is not a single tool, device, experience, or even a single platform.

A Definition

The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments

- Matthew Ball, venture capitalist and author of the Metaverse Primer

A comprehension of the metaverse augurs the appreciation of the constituent components and bit of history.

History

The idea of virtual worlds and the Metaverse isn’t new. It’s just that now we have most of the technology to make it happen.

The first graphical virtual world, known as Habitat, was launched on the Commodore 64 in 1985 by Lucasfilm Games. Second Life has been the leader in virtual world platforms that let people make avatars and have a second life online since it started in 2003.

Figure 1 A Brief History of the Metaverse

Over the decades, numerous developments including smartphones, cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers, Virtual reality hardware, online multi-player platforms have been made.

These are the foundations of the Metaverse of tomorrow.

So, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee auctioned the original source code for the world wide web for charity in June 2021, it was only fitting that it was sold as a non-fungible token (NFT).

The Stack

The Metaverse “stack” consists of the Network, the Hardware, the Compute resources, the supporting Platforms, the Interop Standards, the Payments mechanisms, the enabling Services and the Users.

Figure 2 The Metaverse Stack Many of the technology components that make up the metaverse have been around for a long time and are mature, powerful, and ready to be used right away. Other parts of the metaverse are still in the early stages of development and may not be ready for years.

There have been many private and government investments in things like network bandwidth, computing power, and hardware over the years. Interoperability standards, payment systems, and support services are in the early stages of development. There are a wide range of people involved: traditional utility networks, online game developers, social media giants, software and hardware manufacturers, and new-age payment processors.

The What, Why, Who, And When Of The Metaverse Stack

Stack	What?	Why?	Who?	When?
Network	Network backbone and last-mile connectivity providers including 5G	Need highly reliable, persistent, high bandwidth, always available, and decentralized data transmission	Subspace, Fastly, Starlink	Current, and maturing.
Hardware	VR headsets, mobile phones, haptic gloves, cameras, projection systems, and sensors	Require physical technologies and devices to access, interact with, or develop the Metaverse.	Microsoft HoloLens [i], Qualcomm [ii], Meta Quest (Oculus) [iii], bHaptics [iv], Google Glass	Current, and maturing.
Compute	Advanced computing power including GPU chips, fiber optic cabling and network hardware	New highly demanding computation needs including rendering, data synchronization, artificial intelligence, motion capture and translation Microsoft [v], Google OS for AR [vi] [vii], South Korean Metaverse Alliance [viii], nVIDIA	Maturing and emerging.
Platforms	Development and operation of immersive multi-user simulated 3D virtual worlds	Need ability for users and businesses to explore, create, socialize, and participate in new “realistic” ways	Second Life [ix], Minecraft [x], Roblox [xi], Fortnite [xii], Nikeland (Nike) [xiii], OVR [xiv], Unity Software [xv]	Maturing and emerging.
Interop Standards	Standards for tools, protocols, formats, services, and rendering engines	Interoperability between constituent platforms to ensure seamless experiences and asset sharing is a must.	OpenXR (Khronos) [xvi], Virtual Worlds (IEEE) [xvii], Virtual world object characteristics (ISO) [xviii], X3D [xix], Open Source Metaverse Project [xx]	Current, and maturing.
Payments	Digital payment processes, platforms, and operations	Decentralized fiat on-ramps are essential to support the conversion of fiat to pure-play digital currencies and financial services	Coinbase [xxi], Moonpay, BTCDirect, Mercuryo, Ramp.network, Simplex, Xanpool, Wyre, Banxa, and Onramper	Current, and Maturing
Services	Businesses that provide secure services to transact in the virtual world(s) independent of platforms.	Utilities and financial tools are needed to produce, distribute, sell, store, secure digital assets (including currencies, art, titles, etc.)	Fortnite, Zwift[xxii], Medal.tv [xxiii], Meme.com [xxiv], Walmart, Amazon [xxv], OpenSea	Emerging
Users	Participants (creators, developers, players, businesses) that transact in the Virtual Worlds	Users want a decentralized, secure, private online experience.	Everyone	Emerging

Network

Network bandwidth, latency, and reliability are very important to how we can get into and use the metaverse. In the 1990s, the first home dial-up internet services let people get data at speeds of 33.6 kbit/s to 56k kbit/s. A music single would take 10 minutes to download and a movie more than a day. Affordable bandwidth has made Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix possible. Even so, while data latency is acceptable for VOIP in most cases, the lag in video services is perceptible.

A whole new set of technologies and services will need to be made to deal with the huge amounts of data and make sure it’s safe and reliable in real-time.

Subspace, Fastly, Starlink, and other companies are working on new ways to cut down on the lag and make the internet available to the farthest parts of the world (and beyond). In addition, there must be changes in government and regulations, such as 5G, to deal with the last mile distribution problems.

Hardware

The global pandemic proved that WFH or remote working was not only possible but also secure, economically viable, and socially responsible. However, the inadequate 2D experience has its limitations when applied to long-term remote work. Additionally, it did precious little for vulnerable frontline workers and blue-collar employees.

AR, VR, and MR technologies have started to close this gap. AR adds to our understanding and abilities in the real world by giving us a virtual overlay of highly relevant digital information. This may have sounded like a sci-fi movie fantasy a few years ago, but today the technology is more mature and has even been made available to the public in applications like Google Maps and Amazon shopping.

While consumer experiences have been impressive, enterprise applications have been even more so.

Compute

The short history of computing shows that more computing power always leads to new things. In the opposite way, there has always been a lot more demand for computing than there has been supply.

Even the most advanced online multi-player games can only host a few hundred people at the same time. This is despite all the progress in GPU/CPU capacity and cloud-based computing. If this needs to be used by hundreds, thousands, or even billions of people, we’ll need a lot more computing power than we’ve ever seen or thought about.

From client-server architecture in the 1980’s to n-tier architecture in the 1990’s to cloud-based, edge computing today, we have experimented with compute power in centralized, federalized and networked manifestations.

Perhaps quantum computing is the answer or a combination of concepts borrowed from blockchain and Uber. People who solve cryptographic hashes on their laptops and desktops (a “rideshare”) could be paid for their work. This could lead to a new kind of community computing economy.

Platforms

According to Bill Gates, a platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. To that end, the metaverse is the ultimate platform, a platform of platforms. What constitutes the individual platforms are a set of discrete capabilities. The technology to bring together various digital assets, experiences, and a value-sharing model. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the online gaming economy.

Developers and gamers come together to create experiences and digital assets that are exchanged for a value token. These platforms including Roblox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto Online, and Fortnite are leading the way in terms of capabilities and user engagement. Newer blockchain-based technologies from Decentraland, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space, and Upland are seeking to take pole position in this race to be the platform of the future.

In January 2022, OpenSea raised $300 million in new venture capital raising its valuation to $13.3 billion. For a marketplace platform that launched barely 4 years ago, that is a “smart contract” indeed! Based on the Ethereum standard, it enables users to generate NFTs for free and offer them for direct purchase or auction.

Interop Standards

A standard is a set of commonly agreed rules regarding technical systems. History is replete with many such examples of inter-operability standards. It has been easier for people to get into a new technology or service because there has been more standardization of AC current, electrical outlets, Internet Protocols, Blue-Ray disks, HTML, and SWIFT messages.

There are several projects and organizations at work establishing standards for the various constituent components. These include the OpenXR for access to virtual reality and augmented reality platforms and devices from the Khronos Group, Virtual Worlds standards from IEEE, the Virtual world object characteristics from ISO, and the Open Source Metaverse Project.

In the absence of these standards, Metaverse may never realize its true potential.

Payments

As with any successful economy, growth is measured by how many profitable businesses there are in it. For the Metaverse to be a success, the seamless (fast, cheap, flexible, trusted, permissionless, secure, and extensible) flow of money in and out of the economy needs to happen.

However, this area is rife with problems because hardware and platform vendors have too much power over the people who use them. For example, Apple takes a 30% cut of everything bought on the App Store. An individual game developer on the Roblox platform makes less than 25% of every dollar of revenue after paying for Roblox’s infrastructure costs.

One solution despite all its severe shortcomings, gaining traction is cryptocurrency. Smart contracts allow for new, multi-member entities to be created within minutes, avoiding signing documents, credit checks, lawyers, government filings, or even direct knowledge of the members. They also automatically manage all payment flows, governance rights, and information rights.

Services

When Bill Gates wrote “Content Is King” in 1996, he said, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” There was a rush to put up static web fronts in the early days of the “dotcom” era. During this time, many people were driven by FOMO (fear of missing out). Soon, it became clear that “brick and mortar” had to give way to “click and mortar.” When the metaverse opens, “think and avatar” is the new way to do things. Everyone from Nike, the NFL, the NBA, to Louis Vuitton is ramping up their metaverse storefronts.

“Just as every company a few decades ago created a webpage, and then at some point every company created a Facebook page, I think we’re approaching the point where every company will have a real-time live 3D presence, through partnerships with game companies or through games like Fortnite and Minecraft and Roblox. That’s starting to happen now. It’s going to be a much bigger thing than these previous generational shifts.”

Tim Sweeney (2020) If Amazon is the digital mall of today, what powers the virtual mall of the future? Unity, Unreal, Roblox, Nvidia, Autodesk, Facebook, Snap, Niantic, and many more are vying to build and sell the prime virtual commercial real estate.

Users

A new technology or platform doesn’t work if users don’t change their behavior and start using it. For every Facebook, there are a lot of MySpaces, Google+s, and Orkuts that people did not use. It took a global pandemic to get millions of people to buy their first groceries online. For the Metaverse to work, it needs people to use it. As curiosity and speculative investment cycles fade, only a strong committed user base will help sustain the network.

While the early adopters are the gamers and speculators, there has been a flurry of activity from non-tech entities including sports brands (NFL, FIFA), entertainment brands (Marvel, Star Wars, DC Comics), clothing brands (Nike, Prada, Louis Vuitton), automobile brands (Ford, Lincoln) and many more.

Metaverse Today And Tomorrow

Today, the Metaverse today is still quite young with teething troubles and new technologies that need to be developed. The actual design and implementation of the Metaverse will continue to evolve just as the Internet did beyond its original vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Web 1.0 which lasted from 1991 to the early 2000s was mostly static, but early adopters made significant gains in establishing their Digital identities. Similarly, there are already established components like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, as well as newer platforms like content, crypto trading, and NFT platforms, that can be used right away in both the business and consumer worlds.

For example,

Industry	Today	Tomorrow?
Manufacturing	Microsoft teamed up with a UK-based consortium to train 3,500 factory workers on making life-saving ventilators. The effort leveraged one hundred Microsoft HoloLens 2 devices and mixed reality to create an “augmented reality” factory.	It may soon be a thing of the past for people to work with dangerous machinery in dangerous environments. AR headsets aid in the development of new products by allowing users to see them in 3D before they are manufactured.
Banking	Several Korean banks including The Industrial Bank of Korea and KB Kookmin Bank are actively developing with partners and racing to open a virtual branch office in the metaverse	A virtual bank in the Metaverse staffed by branch manager avatars is not too far from reality.
Healthcare	Clinicians at Duke University utilized HoloLens to superimpose a rebuilt CT image on a patient’s head instead of using regular CT scans and markers to assist with hundreds of complex brain surgery procedures.	Doctors without borders. Microsoft HoloLens has already helped hundreds of difficult medical surgeries. Doctors may be able to perform these complex procedures remotely if they have access to high-quality, always-on connectivity.
Gaming & Entertainment	Disney has launched the “Theme Park Metaverse” and has been granted a patent for a “virtual-world simulator in a real-world venue”. Roblox & Epic games have each successfully staged and sold live virtual performances utilizing independent digital money during pandemic lockdowns.	Virtual vacations? No need to be physically present in Florida to enjoy Disney World.Virtual roller coasters and rides; perhaps even a virtual waiting line for a more authentic experience?
Architecture & Design	Autodesk is investigating its 3D design skills for AR and VR metaverse applications. Nvidia is working on Nvidia Omniverse, a 3D virtual metaverse for architectural design and collaboration tools.	Hopefully, our virtual offices will be better looking than the physical ones.
Offices Collaboration	For immersive conferencing, Microsoft is creating mixed reality spectacles called HoloLens that combine collaboration tools and Xbox game features. By using AR and smart glasses to boost mobility and multi-device accessibility, users may participate in immersive 3D avatar-led meetings.	Immersive board room experience while sitting in your basement. Collaborate and create in real-time with colleagues across the globe in front of virtual whiteboards, attend virtual face-to-face meetings, maintain eye contact and observe subtle facial cues.
Event Management	In April 2020, Travis Scott performed for almost 30 million people in the computer game Fortnite. Microsoft’s AltspaceVR allows real musical performances to be live broadcast as a hologram onto a virtual stage. Chennai-based Dinesh and Janaganandhini Ramaswamy hosted their Hogwarts-themed wedding reception in the Metaverse.	Weddings in the Metaverse will become more mainstream. Conferences and trade shows will only be limited by imagination and not your ability to travel. Tradition meets technology. Visualize virtual Kancheepurams and Digital Mysore Silks. NFTs suddenly makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Real Estate	Through its 3D virtual office environment on Virbela, eXp Realty offers 24/7 access to collaboration tools, training, and socializing for over 30,000 real estate brokers and agents. In November 2021, a property near the “Fashion Street District” was sold for $2,410,200.00 on the Decentraland VR platform.	Real estate agents can organize remote virtual open houses Virtual real estate agents to help close on that “dream” virtual property.
Retail	According to CNBC, Walmart submitted seven applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office in December detailing its ambitions to develop its own cryptocurrency, NFTs, payment system, and e-wallets. Zara, Nike, Adidas, and H&M have opened their Metaverse store presence.	The next-generation shopping experience, without the parking hazzleImagine a shoe shopping trip to Dubai, New York, Paris, and London on the same day with all your friends
Fashion	Roblox has hosted special product releases from premium fashion labels, co-created games, and enticed players to access these “things” in return for digital money.	Trying on clothes before you buy them. Virtual weddings call for virtual clothes. (Rent-a-tux for your avatar).

How Does One Prepare For The Metaverse?

With so many moving parts and an evolving technology stack, it is imperative that leaders identify, train, and empower team members for the specialized skills that will be needed. One can foresee the following job titles and core skill groups becoming relevant:

Evolving Enterprise Architecture

2022-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Born at a time when the CIO did not have a CXO title and reported into the CFO organization, Enterprise Architecture over several decades, has evolved from being a cost of doing business to enabling the business to now being the business. What is the next evolutionary step for Enterprise Architecture? The advent of the great restructuring has ushered in new business models, shifting focus from linear value addition to a multi-exponential platform economy.

The architecture of the enterprise has evolved, so the enterprise architecture must.

Sabarish Muthumperumal

By embracing a patchwork of heterogeneous, innovative business and ecosystem partners, Enterprise Architects and enterprises can quickly aggregate the network effect of business capabilities in the cloud. No discussion on the evolution of enterprise architecture will be complete without an appreciation of the evolution of the business models that it supports.

The Evolution Of Business Models

Since the dawn of the industrial age, the world has seen multiple waves of evolving business models. The introduction of new technologies and advances in existing technologies combined with ever-changing consumer preferences and trends have been the catalysts in every new iteration. Each wave had its share of vanquishers and the vanquished: winners and losers. Innovators were the disruptors, unceremoniously unseating the incumbents and reigning supreme… until a new innovator arrived to take their place. However, just as it is today, innovation and customer demand by themselves did not guarantee success. It took an eclectic mix of product and process innovation, packaging, timing, risk appetite, combined with oodles of sheer luck to successfully disrupt and scale.

The Evolution Of Business Models

1900-1950’S

The Industrial Revolution started in the 1790’s across Europe and the United States, with the transition to machine tools. It took the brilliance of Henry Ford to successfully implement standardization of both product and process design to usher in a new assembly-line based mass-production era of manufacturing. “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”, exemplifies the level of standardization that The Ford Motor Company instituted. These and other similar measures (chassis, number of models) allowed him to bring down the price of the Ford-T from $900 in 1910 (approximately $22,500 today) to $395 in 192 (approximately $4,800 today)! General Electric (GE) applied these principles to mass-produce electric lights, generators, and motors while Proctor & Gamble flooded the market with industrially produced soaps. The sign of business success was the size of the production facilities. Standardization and mass-production reduced the number of choices, but the customers did not mind as the products were abundantly available and affordable.

1950-1990’S

Combining mass production with advanced logistics in procurement and distribution further improved availability and affordability while simultaneously delivering improved quality. Retail giant Walmart and Toyota are classic examples of volume-players that operated at razor-thin margins but raked in superlative profits due to the sheer volumes. Businesses succeeded by passing on the cost benefits of a globally outsourced, standardized production facilities to the customers. Cheaper and better quality? What’s not to like about that?

1990-2010’S

The Internet and affordable, ubiquitous computing options (the PC, smartphones) resulted in the birth of several new business models, leveraging the easy flow of information. Several new business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations were born that were hitherto impossible to conceive or implement. Paperless books (Amazon), disk-free music (Real, MP3s), phoneless voice communication (Skype), tapeless home movies (Netflix), automatically updated encyclopedias (Wikipedia), stamp-less, free, and instantly delivered mail (Hotmail, Gmail), and a freely searchable catalog of information that was not housed in a dusty university library (Google) and many more. “Your network is your net worth”, best characterizes the successful companies of this phase. The free flow of information was key to bringing further efficiencies in manufacturing, procurement, distribution, and support processes. “Innovate or perish” was the clear writing on the wall that was missed by several brick-and-mortar retailers, music labels, telecommunication utilities, and many more.

2010-2020+

The iPhone not only reinvented Alexander Graham Bell’s greatest invention but dropped a powerful computer in every pocket. Communication, media, commerce, entertainment, travel, politics… indeed all of society has since been irreversibly altered. The seller’s market that was de facto since the dawn of the industrial age has almost instantaneously transformed into a strong buyer’s market. A dissatisfied customer once used to vent into a secured 1-800 corporate call center number. Today the same customer tweets about his/her experience, the modern-day equivalent of shouting from the rooftops. In this viral-news-cycle era, a solitary customer social media post can strongly influence the fortunes of well-established organizations. Instagram influencers and YouTubers are the sports stars and Hollywood celebrities today swaying public opinion and raking in millions. All this has resulted in a data-driven obsessive-compulsive consumer focus. Hyper-personalization and customization are de rigueur. Successful companies are agile, nimble, and sense and respond better than their competitors. Other strategies involve partnerships (Costco), unbundling of products, operations, and services (AT&T, Apple), platform/ecosystem development (Walmart, Amazon), open sourcing (Red Hat), freemium (Robinhood) pricing plans, and more.

What Does The Future Hold For Business Models?

2022 And Beyond:

Earlier business models rewarded the investor of the financial capital (Ford, GE, P&G) or the “middle-man” that provided the content sharing platform (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). While the capital investors rake in the profits, the content creators themselves receive precious little. The global pandemic taught corporations that remote work is not only possible, but profitable too. On the other hand, the long dreary months of Zoom, Teams, and WebEx meetings have exposed the short comings of a 2D communication medium. The Great Restructuring will address the consumer demand for varied Digital experiences and a desire for a creator-owner or peer-to-peer financial reward system. This will lead to newer decentralized financial constructs, and immersive work and entertainment experiences. Advances in Data Science will continue to make predictive analytics more accessible, powerful, and viable, leading to a market segmentation of one.

What Is Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture is an approach to strategic business planning and decision making by using a framework of models for describing a business in terms of its environment, its operations, and its IT infrastructure. It is a concept that has evolved into a framework for analyzing and designing enterprise-wide IT solutions. A good enterprise architecture helps align business and technology investments to support organizational goals and allow business leaders to make more informed decisions. A successful organization has an enterprise architecture practice that metamorphs in lockstep with the changes to the business models it supports and the goals that it serves to fulfill.

A Brief History Of Enterprise Architecture

In 1987, John A. Zachman, wrote “A Framework for Information Systems Architecture” in the “IBM Systems Journal”. This was the seminal paper that articulated the need for a logical construct to define and control the interfaces and integration of all the components of the system due to “increasing size and complexity of the implementations of information systems”. Enterprise architecture has had a far shorter lifespan than industrial business models. Hence it is prudent to view it from the lens of increasing maturity levels rather than a timeline view. EA Maturity Levels

Level One

Driven by the notion that IT was an expense, Enterprise Architecture was evaluated as a “Portfolio of Technology Assets”. The focus of the Enterprise Architect was cost containment – accomplished via complexity reduction and efficiency improvements. The architecture was bottom-up in nature, designed to deliver an enterprise-wide technology view by a team of technology architects.

Level Two

As organizations matured, business leaders began to invest in building differentiating competencies. This gave rise to a top-down architectural view that delivered on a “Portfolio of Business Capabilities”. The now expanded Enterprise Architecture team of Business, Process and Data Architects, planned their budgets on delivering new capabilities while continuing to maintain the technology assets.

Level Three

Rapid advances in consumer technologies gave rise to the notion of customer value delivery and the focus shifted to business agility demands. Experience, Organization, and Digital Architects joined the team to deliver customer journeys, value streams, digital experiences, work streams, and lifecycles resulting in a “Portfolio of Products”.

Level Four

To thrive in the API economy, enterprise architecture plays a proactive leadership role, defining the very businesses they serve. From running the enterprise to changing the enterprise, technology architecture is the enterprise now. To deliver on the promise of a Digital Business, the architecture team expands to include business leaders and ecosystem partners. Enterprise architecture teams eschew the habit of building it all in-house and fashion themselves as business orchestrators eager to integrate with external partner products and services.

How Does One Respond?

To operate as efficiently and effectively as consumer technology companies, enterprise architects need to adopt similar approaches as their peers. The fundamental thinking of enterprise architecture as a cost of doing business, or as an index of business capabilities, or a business enabler must be enhanced to reimagining Information Technology and Enterprise Architecture as the business.

Reimagine Your Business

Enterprise Architecture teams and business leaders need to re-imagine the businesses they are in as a fully Digital Business. Change the frame of reference, and visualize the industry segment as a platform, a marketplace, or an ecosystem. For example,

Banks are Digital businesses that provide financial platforms for investors and borrowers to team up.
Retailers are Digital businesses that provide marketplaces for buyers and sellers to transact.
Automobile manufacturers are Digital businesses that provide engineering services to solve transportation problems
Universities are Digital businesses that provide educational platforms for everyone who wants to learn
Libraries are Digital businesses that provide an ecosystem for authors to publish and readers to access content
Florists are Digital businesses that provide marketplaces for growers and consumers to celebrate, sympathize, gift, or decorate.
Airlines are Digital businesses that provide an ecosystem to foster collaboration between airports, vacation destinations, other airlines, and flyers.

Reframing the businesses as a Digital business from the ground up will help identify new opportunities, missing capabilities, technology gaps, and new business partners.

Rethink The Legacy

Legacy in this context applies to both processes and technology assets that are not just past their use-by date, but past their usefulness state as well. What have your processes done for you lately? Assess if your operational procedures are adding value and not acting as bottlenecks. Often, especially in highly regulated industries, it is seen that time-consuming procedures have not changed even though the regulations that originally necessitated the measures have ceased to exist. Sometimes it is organizational inertia, sometimes it is a case of “this-is-the-way-it-has-always-been-done-here” … whatever the cause maybe, even if it is something as sacrosanct as ITIL processes – question if it is relevant – and if it is, can it be automated? Organize a “spring-cleaning” of the application landscape – aggressively eliminate ancient or redundant technology. As with household clean-up activities, if the technology tool has not been used for more than six months, then you can live without it. (Yes, the analogy fails for annual reports). If there are only a handful of users for the tool, are there alternatives available? If the tool/application/license does not help with your future digital state, set an expiry date, and stick to it.

Rebuild API First

Over the past few years, applications have become more distributed and have seen increased adoption of mobile interfaces and microservices architectures. In response, organizations have progressively adopted an integration layer strategy. Essentially, an API wrapper around an existing application or system. Resist this temptation. Allocate resources to rearchitect and rebuild these applications with an API first strategy. API’s cannot be an afterthought any longer. While you are rearchitecting, reassess your API choice as well. REST (representational state transfer) is all the rage today, but do not discount the applicability of earlier integration modes (SOAP APIs, MFT etc.,) or the newer options (WebSockets, GraphQL etc.,) available. Identify the business needs for the information, the nature of the information, the frequency of change, the interested parties, and security while evaluating the appropriate integration mechanism/protocol.

For example,

Data Type

Data Complexity

Data Changes

Communication

Examples

Consider Using

|— |— |— |— |— |— |

Transaction Data

Simple

Real-time / Near-Real-time

One-to-One

Payment processing during e-commerce checkout

REST

Process Status

Simple – Medium

Infrequent

One-to-One

Shipping status provided by shipper on merchant’s site

Embedded Web Components

Continuous Stream

Complex

Real-time

One-to-One / One-to-Many

Stock tickers

Kafka stream

Event/ Transaction Data

Medium – High

Real-time

Bi-directional, One-to-One

Chat, Games

WebSocket

Business Data

Any

Weekly

One-to-One

Analysis reports

Managed File Transfer

Business Data/Events

Any

Real-time

Many-to-Many

Complex interactions between multiple interested parties

Event hub

Business Data

Complex/ Unstructured

Any

One-to-One

Exploratory inquiries/search

GraphQL endpoint

Final Words

Historically, Enterprise Architecture has helped contain operating costs, improve operational efficiencies, increase organizational productivity, increased profit margins and more. Now, as part of the Great Restructuring, is well poised to help transform businesses into a Digital Business.
Thankfully, in the age of the API economy, enterprises no longer need to provide all the differentiating business capabilities by themselves. By recruiting a trusted network of innovative business and technology partners, enterprises will continue to flourish and be ready for changes and issue challenges. When it comes to the business of architecting the enterprise, Enterprise Architecture is highly enterprising, … it says so in the name itself!

Measuring Software Development Productivity

2020-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Management guru Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” While its possible and quite useful to measure productivity in a manufacturing or services world, is it feasible to do so in the world of software development? Obviously one can count the number or widgets cranked out in a hour, or cups of coffee served or patients attended to in a day – but software? Isn’t that like magic?

Over the years, several attempts have been made to measure the software developer productivity and efficiency using lines of code produced, function points developed, use stories delivered, features shipped and more. Do they work? Sadly no.

Relying on one measure to assess the individual or team productivity is a recipe for disaster. Despite all good intentions it will only encourage and propagate bad behavior.

For example, counting lines of code, will result in inefficient code that needs to be tested more. Counting the number of features developed might delay the necessary or must have features from being shipped or prioritized. Focusing on the number of incidents handled will put emphasis on “patching” code rather than innovation or architecture improvements.

Should we then accept the fact that software development is an art, and that it cannot and should not be measured? Not so, we can and should measure software development to encourage the right set of organization behaviors and outcomes.

Rather than measuring output, one should measure outcomes. Progress, Quality, Efficiency and business Value. Here are some samples (by no means exhaustive)

Progress

Cycle times (from planning to testing)
Accumulation of tech debt (How much is the progress costing you over time?)
Frequency of builds (do you do daily, hourly, weekly?)
Burndown
Measure Velocity, and the velocity increases over sprints
Sustainability of the velocity (are you having a team burn out?)
Quality
Failure rates
Number of production defects
Defect density
Test coverage
Automated test failure rates
Efficiency
Cumulative flow diagrams
Mean time to resolution
Cycle times (from planning to production)
Frequency of production builds
Business Value
Cycle time (from concept to go live)
Customer usage
Business value points delivered (akin to story points delivered)
Sales / cost reductions / error reduction – or whatever else the program goals are
By tailoring and weighting these measures to your organization’s vison, culture and desired outcomes and behaviors, you can arrive at a scoring mechanism that is valuable.

And remember that no one scoring mechanism fits all scenarios or types of IT projects. A development project may need different measures viz and viz a product in maintenance mode. A simple web application where the requirements are clear will need a different weightage mechanism as compared to the rollout of a point of sale or an ATM system.

Also, bear in mind that as with Agile processes, the scoring logic and measures need to evolve with the level of maturity within the teams and the organization at large.

Good luck selling this idea to your team at the next stand-up!

Scaling Agile

2020-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Scrum processes work very well at the individual team level. However, when scaling to larger number of teams problems such as Reliability & Consistency, Quality, Coordination and Communication become a huge challenge. Employing a scaling framework such as LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) or SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) helps alleviate these challenges.

Identifying the specific challenges at the portfolio, program and team levels and recommending framework modifications and tweaks takes the expertise of experienced Agile Coaches. Note that these frameworks need to be tailored and customized for individual program needs.

So, Less Or Safe?

While LeSS follows the principle of Less is More and is a Set of rules and principles; SAFe is highly prescriptive on the processes to be followed. SAFe scales well at the portfolio, program and team levels, while LeSS is more at the team level. Inter-team coordination is via a structured, formal release planning process in SAFe. LeSS advocates less structure and relies more on how well team coordinate among themselves. SAFe relies on incremental planning and demo sessions. LeSS relies on Stable, long-lived, cross-functional teams. LeSS focuses on working together to deliver a specific product. SAFe focuses on managing and creating a centralized strategy to deliver value.


“More with LeSS”. Is a set of rules and principles	Highly prescriptive on the processes to be followed
LeSS works very well at the team level	Scales well at the portfolio, program and team levels
Advocates less structure and relies more on how well team coordinate among themselves	Inter-team coordination is via a structured, formal release planning process
Relies on Stable, long-lived, cross-functional teams	Relies on incremental planning and demo sessions
Focus on working together to deliver a specific product	Focus on managing and creating a centralized strategy to deliver value

So, what works for you?

Management Or Leadership

2020-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

A simple search for “leadership” on Amazon, returns 125,215 books; while “management” has 946,376 results. So is management more important than leadership? Case closed… Management is more researched and written/published seven fold more. That’s significant! Case closed. Management is more relevant and important than Leadership.

However the data scientist in me screamed that there weren’t enough data points…

Comparing Leadership and Management as academic field of interest on Google Trends, reveals a compelling and different story. The interest in these terms had varied starkly over the past decade. While the interest in Management is still higher than that of Leadership, it’s obvious that its “lead” is waning.

What Is Leadership?

So what is leadership anyways? It’s not that leadership is an entirely new concept. Thinkers and philosophers from Lao Tzu in 630 B.C, Plato in 350 B.C to Thomas Carlyle and Cecile Rhodes in the modern era have meditated upon this topic at length. While many have been prescriptive, most have tried to identify what attributes or qualities differentiate a leader from a follower. Almost all agree that Leadership has to do with “power”.

Joeseph Nye in his book, “The Powers to Lead”, provides insights from modern day leaders ranging from Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who did not have official powers) to elected officials such as Truman and Churchill to classify and further nuance the understanding this pervasive subject.

Leadership: The Good And The Bad

The metaphorical antonym of a leader would be follower; however Joeseph’s academic prose veers to another interesting topic – Bad Leadership and Good Leadership. This is a particularly interesting topic to me, since I’m often grappling with these distinctions at work, be it assessing my subordinates or my superiors. Is a person a “good” leader because he is effective and gets the job done, or should one reserve judgment on “good” versus “bad” based on the means employed?

I’ve worked with leaders who yell, scream, threaten or otherwise arm-twist their team to work late and over the weekends to get the work done on time. There are others who give their teams room to think and get the work accomplished in a more conducive and collaborative manner. Both get the tasks accomplished, but it’s in my experience that not only are the collaborative leaders more inspiring to work with, they have the least attrition rates. These teams are often more creative and are more productive as well.

However, “goodness” and “ethics” alone cannot determine leadership qualities. Once again the critical skills of emotional intelligence, communication, vision on one hand and hard skills including organizational skills and Machiavellian political skills determine the type and effectiveness of leadership. Bringing all this together in recognition of the fact different circumstances calls for different skills to be used – Nye illustrates the importance of Contextual Intelligence. In my professional experience, I’ve seen how a collaborative style of leadership succeeded in one client engagement while failed to take off in another. A leadership mode based heavily on soft power skills (when I had no formal authority, and lead a team that was at a layer of designation over me) in a networked environment worked beautifully. However in a more mercenary style of work environment, the failure to re-calibrate my leadership styles to include more hard charging Machiavellian political skills cost me my health and family time.

A Case For Management

Management is often times written about disparagingly these days, particularly in context of leadership. This is wrong. Leadership and management are not mutually exclusive; in fact strong management skills are a bedrock upon which to build leadership caliber. In other words, if you can manage, you cannot lead, since the routine will trip you up.

One of the key “management” disciplines I’ve struggled with (and continue to) is Time management. I’m of the belief that one cannot manage time, and one needs to manage the tasks. Taken in a different way, I never manage my team members; rather I manage their tasks – there by giving them a sense of direction and time awareness. However, I’ll freely admit that I’m woefully wanting when it comes to managing my own time.

Reviewing Time Management matrix from Steven Covey (The Seven Habit of Highly Effective People), renewed my intent to conquer time. Only I realize that it’s not managing time nor tasks that needs to be done – but the right prioritization. Unbeknownst to me, this is exactly what I’d been doing for my team members. Since I knew the importance and urgency of each of the tasks I’d assigned them, it was easy enough for me sequence them logically. However, only my own tasks I tried to plunge in on a first come first serve basis. This put me constantly in the crisis/fire-fighting mode while true recreation suffered – to cope I ended up watching mindless TV shows into the wee hours of the night.

Two words. Negative Spiral.

Viewing the full range of tasks through the quadratic prism, I realized I could actually spend time on Quality and Personal Leadership tasks such as Planning, prevention and relationship building by consciously avoiding Wasteful actions such as diving into DVR-hell.

By consciously and deliberately adding more focus on important and non-urgent tasks, in the past couple of weeks, I’m slowly realizing that I’m better prepared to handle the urgent and important tasks.

The Role of the CIO

2020-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Irrespective of whether the enterprise is fighting for survival, maintaining competitiveness, or breaking away, technology plays a vital and pivotal role. The CIO as the “wielder” of this powerful force must balance innovation, keeping the lights on and removing obstacles and deadweight to thrive in this knowledge economy. What is more, he/she needs to perform with agility, on a tight budget and communicate eloquently while maneuvering forward on uncharted territories.

Introduction

The “Trimūrti” (“three forms”) is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. These three gods have been called “the Hindu triad”or the “Great Trinity”,often addressed as “Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara” (Wikipedia, 2014).

Today’s global business landscape is changing faster than ever before fuelled by technology and innovation. Technology at once is the great innovator, the great leveler and the ultimate disrupter.

Technology innovations have created new business opportunities and revenue streams. The ubiquity of technology has caused it to be seen as the “cost of doing business” while improving productivity and reducing expenses. And, yet at the same time, technology has leveled many a David-Goliath battle and caused the death and destruction of several brick-and-mortar establishments.

Irrespective of whether the enterprise is fighting for survival, maintaining competitiveness, or breaking away, technology plays a vital and pivotal role (Broadbent, 2004). The CIO as the “wielder” of this powerful force must balance innovation, keeping the lights on and removing obstacles and deadweight to thrive in this knowledge economy. What is more, he/she needs to perform with agility, on a tight budget and communicate eloquently while maneuvering forward on uncharted territories.

Playing God is no easy task, nor does it come with an instruction manual. While there is no definitive guide or road map, there however is a framework that needs to be established to increase the chances of success.

The Ten New Priorities

In their book “The new CIO Leader”, Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis identify ten focus areas that the CIO must embrace.

Lead, Don’T Just Manage.

If IT is to be the forefront of business transformation, the CIO must lead from front and not simply manage the mundane. IT must be positioned as the driver and not merely a follower.

Understand The Fundamentals Of Your Environment.

Of course to enhance business or to otherwise engage with the business, one must understand the industry that one operates in – the markets, the competitors, the products or services that one’s organization produces and how those fare in comparison with the competition , what threats loom and what untapped competitive advantages exist.

Create A Vision For How It Will Build Your Organization’S Success.

The CIO must then take his/her understanding of the business goals and weave a comprehensive and cohesive technology vison for the organization. How will your enterprise morph to support the business?

Shape And Inform Expectations For An It-Enabled Enterprise.

Critically, the CIO must work with his/her business colleagues to identify the key business needs, strategies and drivers and then articulate the IT guidelines necessary to address those needs.

Create Clear And Appropriate It Governance.

Establish the mechanisms to ensure the IT strategy is translated to viable implementations. Too rigorous a governance will result in inflexibility and irrelevance and too lax will result in a runaway train.

Weave Business And It Strategy Together

There are no IT projects, only business ones. This maxim is true for strategy as well. Unless the IT strategy resonates with the business strategy, the IT activities are bound to be misguided and wasteful.

Build A New Is Organization—One That Is Leaner And More Focused Than Its More Traditional Predecessor

A lean team not only helps keep costs in check, more importantly it ensures that the team is nimble and ready to adapt to business needs quickly. Outsourcing non-value adding activities frees up your team to focus on more value enhancing activities.

Build And Nurture A High-Performing Team In Your Is Organization

What makes the team tick? Are their skills relevant in today’s technology and business landscape? How does one ensure that the team members are adequately trained and motivated to continue to deliver on your promises? Rob Stefanic, CIO at Sensata Corporation acknowledges that identifying, recruiting and retaining top IT talent as one of the biggest challenges he needs to tackle. Indeed, he has penciled in a significant portion of his IT budget to build a world class “Human Capital Management” system.

Manage The New Enterprise And It Risks

According to the Global State of Information Security Survey 2015 survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers, cyber security incidents grew by 48% in 2014 (PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC., 2014). The new economy brings with it new threats and risks, the CIO must ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to manage these risks upfront.

Communicate Performance In Business-Relevant Language

For IT to reach its full potential, though, all of its functions—strategy and planning, application development, and operations—must be managed to the highest professional standards. IT has to be run like a business in itself. (Wolfgang Thiel, 2010)

“We work, operate, and measure ourselves not as a support service but as a business. We have metrics and measures that are very compatible with the ones P&G uses for our line business units”, says Mr. Passerini when talking about the way his organization works within Proctor and Gamble. This means that one must connect IT investment to the P&L statement and IT value must be articulated as business value earned rather than IT costs reduced.

Bringing It All Together

The ability to sense, analyze and respond rapidly is more important than ever before. Tectonic shifts in every industry caused by technology waves have resulted in IT being viewed as a business driver rather than merely as a follower or business enabler. Along with the technology, the CIO’s role has rapidly expanded from the back-office and middle-office to the front office now. However, traditional technology functions such as email services, print services, help desk and infrastructure continue to claw into IT capacity and bandwidth. The CIO leader must balance the need to keep the lights on (supply side) and grow the business (demand side)

To deliver a unified, consistent and solid enterprise, the CIO must apply the ten priorities in every aspect of technology decisions, activities and spending. These include hugely transformative enterprise architecture decisions, communication styles, social impact, global trends, industry hype and overall CIO leadership.

Architect The Enterprise

To execute on strategy, one must have a strong foundation. “Companies execute better because they have a better foundation for execution. They have embedded technology in their processes so that they can efficiently and reliably execute the core operations of the company” (Jeanne W. Ross, 2006).

First, define the operating model based on need for process standardization versus process integration (Coordination, Unification, Diversification or Replication) and then implement it via enterprise architecture. Encapsulating Enterprise Architecture in a Core Diagram that is easily understood by non-technical colleagues will help in stimulating conversation, ensuring business alignment, building credibility and gaining sponsors for technology initiatives.

Pulse On The Industry Trends

It is neither possible nor necessary for the technology leader to be an expert at every new technology or technology trend. However, it is essential that the CIO know enough about it to realize the potential to further one’s business agenda and to differentiate hype from reality.

From cost reduction and risk mitigation (e.g., outsourcing) to massively disruptive technologies (e.g., Big Data, BYOD) to regulatory compliance (e.g., the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH)) or threats and risks, new trends must be evaluated for relevance and applicability for one’s own industry.

Cyber Security

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “In the not-too-distant future, we anticipate that the cyber threat will pose the greatest threat to our country.” Researchers from University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering successfully hacked popular apps like Gmail, CHASE Bank, and H&R Block with an 82% to 92% success rate. (Eutaw, 2014) This serves to highlights just how vulnerable personal information truly is in this information age. Depending on the industry one is in, a dedicated cyber security response team might be required.

No enterprise can afford to take its legal, ethical or social responsibilities lightly. These were traditionally the realm for the legal or marketing departments. However, today an organization’s impeccable global image can get decimated in 140 characters or less in no time at all. Suddenly, the CIO role is hugely responsible for social, legal, and ethical issues that confront the organization.

Ethical issues raised by widespread use of information systems include establishing accountability for the consequences of [failure of ] information systems, setting standards to safeguard system quality that protect the safety of individuals and society, and preserving values and institutions considered essential to the quality of life in an information society (Ken Laudon, 2014).

Communications And Selling Business Value

One of the visibility traps that IT suffers from is “We shouldn’t have to talk about our performance; it speaks for itself” (Westerman, 2009). IT must learn to “toot its horn” and articulate the business value that it delivers in a lucid and business friendly manner.

Some leaders such as P&G’s Passierini and Intel’s Kim Stevenson have realized the worth of better communication and selling business value.

Stevenson describes her goal in publishing IT reports is to “engage with at key points along our journey, sharing insights and best practices and regularly with our IT experts, customers and fellow travelers.” (High, 2014). As a result of this transparency, “Businesses view IT more and more as a strategic partner, a key differentiator that can help drive IT business value and innovation.”

Conclusion

On one hand, the IT function today faces existential questions ranging from its impact on productivity to relevance as a strategic business advantage. On the other hand, businesses today get swept away in the blink of an eye by technology disruptors and traditional business models and business cycles are crumbling.

The CIO role then is a tightrope act balancing the demands on lowered IT costs and increased productivity while creating business drivers and new avenues for growth. IT leaders need to function at two speeds to seize the opportunity in digital business. “Enterprises must learn to operate in two essential modes, known as Bimodal IT, because they can’t lose sight of the need to maintain operations while they innovate with digital possibilities”, according to Daryl Plummer, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

Echoing a similar sentiment, Francisco D’Souza CEO, Cognizant Technology Solutions says that for businesses to adapt to today’s changing landscape is to simultaneously execute on efficiency and scale with existing systems, while driving business innovation through newer technologies. This is referred to as the “dual mandate”. Run better. Run Different.

The CIO must wear multiple hats –a business expert, a marketing genius, a technology guru, and overall as a savvy leader.

The CIO today must be as adept in the boardroom as he/she is in the server-room.

3 Ideas For Defect Free Software, Yes It’s Possible

2018-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Nothing frustrates Software development managers and software development teams more than defects. It causes project delays, cost overruns and makes you and your team look immature and irresponsible in front of customers. Defect rates, defect density measures and defect reopen counts are the bane of many a development project. Few people can name even one piece of software which they use that has no bugs. A team member once argued that even software packages that have matured over decades such as MS Excel continue to have defects (ironically the team member was a tester)! However, over the years developing software and mentoring software development teams I have come to believe that it is possible to get defect free software, by following these 3 ideas –

Pride

Awareness of the value that the software brings to the end-users transforms the developer mentality more than any other reward or penalty. It answers the question, “Who cares?!”. Enable teams to get feedback directly from users. Not only how their bad code is negatively impacting their work; but how the software is making their lives better. Developers should be encouraged to feel proud of their work.
Encourage teams to aim for 100% defect free code. To aim for 100% defect free code; they need to begin to believe that 100% defect free code is not only essential, but is possible. Dissuade the common cop-out and aspersion that no software exists without bugs.
Gamification – A weekly/daily Leaderboard of defect free code check-ins will drive home positive reinforcement. Reward performers with points, mementoes and “rolling trophies”. At one place we had soccer balls and footballs that got re-awarded (tossed around) on a monthly basis, with the autographs of the previous winners.

Process

Inspect the right areas – “People respect what you inspect not what you expect”.
- Inspecting Defect closure counts will only encourage quicker turnaround in defect closure – Not code quality. Do not confuse expectations with inspections.
- Code reviews cannot and should not be an asynchronous activity. Feedback (positive and negative) must be given throughout the development process.
- Shower credits for building arks than for predicting rain
Code Showcases over Code reviews – Provide opportunity for team members to show off their work – to their peers and seniors. Allow developers to explain the use case/user story and the code they wrote. This needs to be an all hands meeting (use projectors, video conferencing or remote meeting software), with active participation in an informal setting. The role of the leads/managers is to ensure that the mood and setting is encouraging and positive and not to be perceived as a witch-hunt. The collaboration serves multiple purposes
Learning- Developers learn by examples of good code with live examples. Developers can get feedback on poor code/algorithms in an informal, non-threatening and friendly setting.
Validation – Gives opportunity to validate that the developers have understood the problem and implemented a complete solution. Cross impact to other areas of the application become instantly visible.
Code Refactor and Reuse – Seeing and learning about other areas of the application encourages discovery of reusable components.
Automate Code Validation and Testing – Invest in and enforce the usage of static code analyzers and testing software to reduce the associated fatigue.

Perseverance

Inspiration is Perishable – Resist attempts to go into auto-pilot mode too early. Establishing a process is great; but ensure that the process is implemented and followed through day after day, week after week, sprint after sprint and release after release. Show that as a manager you care. Attend each and every code show case session even of you do not understand much.
Give time for the process to work. Changing behavior and mindsets are not overnight events. Resist attempts to switch processes or abandon processes when they don’t show immediate results. Frequent ad hoc changes to the plan and process not only confuses the developers and testers, but undermines your leadership direction – and makes you look weak and undecided.

What I’ve described are a combination of processes and tools that will help achieve better quality code. However, the key to success is the fundamental change in behavior. This can be achieved only through a conscious effort to instill and encourage better behavior across the entire team. Neither a top-down, nor a bottom-up approach will work – and the change has to permeate as a culture across the organization. Developers, testers and managers have to embrace the possibility of 100% defect free code to make it the new reality.

Carr’s Statement That IT Does Not Matter In Light Of Langer’s Driver/Supporter Theory

2017-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Businesses have overestimated the strategic value of IT and must cut back on spend and expectations, asserts Nicholas Carr while stating that IT does not matter. He contends that core IT functions such as data storage, transmission and processing of digital information have become utility services and no longer offer competitive differentiation. Dr. Langer’s Driver/Supporter theory identifies commodity IT functions as Supporter products while recognizing other IT projects as Driver functions that strategically integrate with the business, playing a frontline revenue generating role. He further identifies the life cycle over which Drivers are evaluated, mature, get assimilated into the organization and eventually become Supporters.

Cognizant a global IT services major, developed code generator tools that helped differentiate it from the competition and secured rewarding client contracts. However, competitors were quick to revert with plagiarized tools of their own causing erosion of this strategic advantage. Cognizant’s IT organization recognized that the key to generating and sustaining non-linear growth is to innovate and bring alternate technology differentiators such as Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud offerings. These Drivers have resulted in continued financial success[i].

[i] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/11/05/cognizants-ceo-thanks-smac-for-record-breaker/ (Forbes Inc. 2013)

Cricket And Data Science

2017-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

“Key to Success – When playing outside Asia, score more than 280, since India loses 73% of the matches defending lower scores”.

I was immediately mesmerized by this kind of definitive predictions before each innings of the Cricket World Cup matches on ESPN. While I marveled the data science behind this, my thoughts wandered back to the early days of cricket statistics provided by Wisden.

Data

Since first appearing in early 1800’s to almost until 1980’s, when the first One Day Internationals were played, the Wisden’s yearly publication of facts and figures was the only source of curated cricketing data. And this served its purpose well; it allowed bookies and patrons determine player batting averages and determining the betting odds!

Information

As cricket game shortened from five days to one, so did the need to wait for statistics. By the 1980’s one had access to cricket information as the batsman walked in to bat – how many centuries, how many matches, batting average, number of ducks scores etc., were displayed on television sets all over. This served it purpose to infuse interest and excitement to the modern game.

Insights

Along with the aggressive Australian style of play, came the need for aggressive responses. Static information gave way to actionable insights in the 1990’s. As the match progresses, one was treated to an array of graphical analysis – Manhattans (histograms), Worms (line graphs), that showed information ball-by-ball, run-by-run and wicket-by-wicket. Was the team chasing making as many runs per over as the opposition had? Should they send in a pinch hitter? Were they losing too many wickets? Should they send in someone to steady the innings? Was the run rate too high, must the fielding side bring back the seamers? Actionable insights provided captains and arm-chair experts the information needed to turn the game!

Predictions

Come 2015, actionable insights is barely enough; armed with terabytes of data from cricket matches played on every continent and every condition against every opposition, captains and viewers alike now have the keys to successes, long before the match is played. This allows captains to select the right opening pair, the right batsman to bowler combination, and select the appropriate playing eleven – not based on instinct alone, but backed by data. Later this year, I saw similar predictive analytics applied to other sports including the Wimbledon and the US Open. However, I suspect no one predicted Serena’s loss!

Question

If this is what predictive data analytics can do for sport, imagine what it can do for your business! Does it help to know when a customer is likely to buy and what he/she is likely to buy? Can you plan your procurement processes against this insight? If you knew that you were about to have an unhappy customer, what would you differently? Importantly, now that you have the predictive insights, are your business processes agile and nimble to adapt and respond?

Welcome to Millennial!

2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Millennial is a minimalist Jekyll theme. The purpose of this theme is to provide a simple, clean, content-focused blogging platform for your personal site or blog. Below you can find everything you need to get started.

Getting Started

Getting Started: getting started with installing Millennial, whether you are completely new to using Jekyll, or simply just migrating to a new Jekyll theme.

Example Content

Text and Formatting

Questions?

This theme is completely free and open source software. You may use it however you want, as it is distributed under the MIT License. If you are having any problems, any questions or suggestions, feel free to tweet at me, or file a GitHub issue.

More Jekyll!

Lagrange

Lagrange is a minimalist Jekyll blog theme that I built from scratch. The purpose of this theme is to provide a simple, clean, content-focused blogging platform for your personal site or blog.

Feel free to check out the demo, where you’ll also find instructions on how to use install and use the theme.

Portfolio Jekyll Theme

This is a Jekyll theme built using the DevTips Starter Kit as a foundation for starting, and following closely the amazing tutorial by Travis Neilson over at DevTips. The purpose of this theme is to provide a clean and simple website for your portfolio. Emphasis is placed on your projects, which are shown front and center on the home page.

Everything that you will ever need to know about this Jekyll theme is included in the repository, which you can also find in the demo site.

Jekyll Starter Kit

The Jekyll Starter Kit is a simple framework for starting your own Jekyll project using all of the best practices that I learned from building my other Jekyll themes.

Feel free to check out the GitHub repository, where you’ll also find instructions on how to use install and use the theme.

Saba

Metaverse: Virtual Becomes Real

Introduction

A Definition

- Matthew Ball, venture capitalist and author of the Metaverse Primer

History

The Stack

The What, Why, Who, And When Of The Metaverse Stack

Network

Hardware

Compute

Platforms

Interop Standards

Payments

Services

Users

Metaverse Today And Tomorrow

How Does One Prepare For The Metaverse?

Evolving Enterprise Architecture

Sabarish Muthumperumal

The Evolution Of Business Models

1900-1950’S

1950-1990’S

1990-2010’S

2010-2020+

What Does The Future Hold For Business Models?

2022 And Beyond:

What Is Enterprise Architecture?

A Brief History Of Enterprise Architecture

Level One

Level Two

Level Three

Level Four

How Does One Respond?

Reimagine Your Business

Rethink The Legacy

Rebuild API First

Final Words

Measuring Software Development Productivity

Progress

Quality

Efficiency

Business Value

Scaling Agile

So, Less Or Safe?

Management Or Leadership

What Is Leadership?

Leadership: The Good And The Bad

A Case For Management

The Role of the CIO

Introduction

The Ten New Priorities

Lead, Don’T Just Manage.

Understand The Fundamentals Of Your Environment.

Create A Vision For How It Will Build Your Organization’S Success.

Shape And Inform Expectations For An It-Enabled Enterprise.

Create Clear And Appropriate It Governance.

Weave Business And It Strategy Together

Build A New Is Organization—One That Is Leaner And More Focused Than Its More Traditional Predecessor

Build And Nurture A High-Performing Team In Your Is Organization

Manage The New Enterprise And It Risks

Communicate Performance In Business-Relevant Language

Bringing It All Together

Architect The Enterprise

Pulse On The Industry Trends

Cyber Security

Social, Legal, And Ethical Issues

Communications And Selling Business Value

Conclusion

3 Ideas For Defect Free Software, Yes It’s Possible

Pride

Process

Perseverance

Carr’s Statement That IT Does Not Matter In Light Of Langer’s Driver/Supporter Theory

Cricket And Data Science

Data

Information

Insights

Predictions

Question