Thursday, August 8, 2013

Future of IT as a department in an Organization

It would be a great mistake, if one can’t understand and prepare for the changes that are happening in the Information Technology part of the business and corporate world. These changes are happening in such a phase that is leading to a fundamental shift in direction of the way the job functions in an IT department is constructed, staffed and operated today. All these changes if not most of them are non-reversible in nature; means the shift is permanent and is not a temporary phenomenon. The technological advances combined with social responsiveness fuel these changes with a greater acceptance. Enterprises and organizations as always follow the individual consumers in realizing and adapting to these changes.

If an organization believes these changes are removing the traditional way of working and map it the elimination of the jobs would end up in a dead end. The reality is these shift demands new skills and new set of workforce economics. Here the cost is directly proportional to the talent density than the physical count of the employees.

As a two part series, let me articulate the changes and their effect on their traditional outlook of IT as a business unit.


  • Platform architecture: One of the most significant trends that might impact an IT business unit is that the age of “viewing everything through an application lens is coming to an end.” Instead, platform architectures will be selected primarily to cope with soaring volumes of data and the complexity of data management, not for their ability to support applications. The tried and true relational database will not go away, but it will soon start to make way for other types of databases – streaming databases, for instance – that mark a significant departure from what IT departments and business users have relied on for decades.
  • Cloud Computing: The focus will shift from simple infrastructure solutions to developing cloud strategies that deliver increased functionality and flexibility using a mix of public and private cloud-based application and platform services. While many challenges remain, cloud is nonetheless poised to change the face of enterprise computing. The adaptation to cloud from the application hosting perspective changes the traditional IT of running ‘on-premises’ to ‘on-demand’ mode; a completely different set off skill sets are required to manage and reap the cost benefits of the cloud infrastructure & applications. 
  • Data Security: The fortress mentality, in which all IT has to be architected to be foolproof, is giving way to a security architecture that responds proportionately to threats when and where they happen.” As a result, the role of people in data security will decline, replaced by automated capabilities that detect, assess, and respond immediately. The IT becomes a hosted environment; a variety of automated, industry-tested applications will take over your ‘organization specific’ security, both at the infrastructure and application levels. Organizations have to be practical and evolve to the maturity of understanding the new-age threats and manage the changes in adopting and implementing the standards.
  • Analytics: Companies that continue to view analytics, as a simple extension of business intelligence will be “severely underestimating analytics’ potential to move the needles on the business.” Among other failings, traditional BI does not take advantage of the wealth of unstructured data that is now available. IT leaders will need to work closely with business leaders to identify where analytics can be leveraged effectively, as well as the proper mix of services required to optimize analytics capabilities across the enterprise. The organizations have to turn their focus from a traditional transactional reporting to a world of agile, real real time and enable predictive analysis.
  • Architecture: Information technology is evolving from a world that is server-centric to one that is service-centric. Companies are quickly moving away from monolithic systems that were wedded to one or more servers toward finer-grained, reusable services distributed inside and outside the enterprise. The goal: to decouple infrastructure, systems, applications, and business processes from one another. This approach is well have it’s best benefits, if the analytics is taken into consideration as explained in the previous step.
  • User Experience: Today, business process design is driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction. Tomorrow it will be driven by the need to create superior user experiences that help to boost customer satisfaction. Great user experiences will require more layered approaches than what is typical today. As such, application design will be a multidisciplinary exercise: Typically handled today by IT architects and business owners, tomorrow it will involve optimization from the perspective of the process actor, with the emphasis on simplicity and on removing inefficiencies. The power of the mobile devices and the experience of the consumers with them will drive the expectations and will dictate the successful applications with satisfied users.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

My Presentation at UNIFIL

Two weeks after the go-live of Umoja project, I was given an opportunity to present to the UNIFIL management, section chiefs and key users at the ramp up closure event. I had only two days and had to present the components related to user management and related topics. I decided to take the presentation into two segments one being the state of the union after the two weeks and segwayed to the main discussion point. I took a lot of time to take away the technical complexity of the topic and to provide a bigger brush stroke of the topic. I decided then to take the presentation to a different level and make the audience get involved with the topic. 
I was a bit nervous as the presentation room was shifted to a real & big meeting room that was equipped with a good set of presentation equipments. The day before I had to stay late night to make sure my Macbook pro works with the system. I was very thankful to my colleagues Jamal and his teammate for helping me late in the day despite their fasting. I had to make certain adjustments in the presentation to fit into the resolution of the big screen and two monitors on the sides. I also had to take my presentation on a memory stick if in case I'd some issues with the connectivity during the presentation time.
The day started well and the main discussion points were taken in the first session. As expected they over ran the schedule and that might have encroached into the later presentations. We took a break for 10 minutes and that gave me enough time to set up my MacBook and bring up the presentation on the screen. I had a rough idea of my narratives, but was confident to deliver. As the meeting started, I started with a small story to bring the group into the context of the content. I was very well aware that the first few minutes would be crucial to get their interest in what I'm going to say, keeping in mind the standard deviation of the exposure the my topic with the audience. I took the narrative as a story.
Other than a little hiccup at the initial stages with the mic, everything went well. Within few minutes, I was getting more and more confident, as I can see the faces of the audience bright and involved. I was able to  freely look into all directions during the delivery. I think it took around 31 minutes and when I wanted to finish, I thought of relating myself once again. I decided to say that my experience of changes in perception about UNIFIL from when I landed and till date and relate it to their experience with the new application. I finished with a big 'Thank You'; as I look around and waited, there was a bit of silence; then a burst of applause.
I felt very happy as everyone in the audience came to be, hugged and told me that the awed by the presentation and the clarity of the topics discussed. They were extremely generous to praise me all the way. 
The only thing I did not plan was to record the presentation; I had to reconstruct it later as there was a lot of interest generated by word of mouth. Here it is and let's see how you feel about it. Click on the image below:
Presentation at UNIFIL