{"id":4514,"date":"2016-06-27T23:35:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/watching-out-for-the-rapid-evolution-of-core-digital-business-changes\/"},"modified":"2016-06-27T23:35:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T23:35:00","slug":"watching-out-for-the-rapid-evolution-of-core-digital-business-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/watching-out-for-the-rapid-evolution-of-core-digital-business-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching out for the rapid evolution of core digital business changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s easy to make a\u00a0compelling case that\u00a0\u2018digital\u2019\u00a0will ultimately replace what was once\u00a0\u2018IT\u2019 at some point in the future as the former rapidly evolves and the latter become more and more associated with legacy technology and practices. hedging bets on what will happen and when however is a\u00a0different matter entirely and hugely variable from\u00a0business to business.<!-- pagebreak --><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A\u00a0historical analogy I\u2019ve used\u00a0frequently is the period when steam\u00a0power slowly gave way to electrification. Steam enabled the industrial revolution and generations of power creation and transfer expertise. Simplifying, early manufacturing typically had one giant steam engine driving\u00a0multiple leather belts to various\u00a0\u2018creating\u2019 contraptions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Along came electrification and boilermakers and belt tensioning experts started to work alongside electric motors and light, but the period when these two power sources co existed was\u00a0surprisingly long as companies\u00a0sunsetted their amortization\u00a0of steam power and invested in\u00a0electrical.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It wasn\u2019t until the 1930\u2019s that\u00a0\u2018as a service\u2019 from the plug socket and light switch\u00a0regulated electrical grids\u00a0 were established in north America. Prior to that\u00a0electrification was very parochial and needs driven for the creation of\u00a0electric light and to power specific factories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M0YMpzA_0DY\" width=\"560\" height=\"314\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Just as early use of digital media for\u00a0marketing\u00a0is analogous to the creation of neon signs and electric light arrays in cities as soon as their generation was possible, today the focus on\u00a0\u2018digital\u2019 has been skewed towards marketing though social networks and\u00a0\u2018customer conversations\u2019. Electric light displays in\u00a0places like Times Square NYC were the wonder of the world only 100 years ago, initially hand switched on and off in sequence by staff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All\u00a0fascinating history, what has this got to do with our digital\u00a0\u2018as a service\u2019 world? The period when steam power slowly moved to the less\u00a0visible\u00a0role of creation of distributed electrical power is analogous to the way\u00a0enterprise computing has evolved. Cloud and mobile networks\u00a0have transformed our world on an individual basis but as we all know there\u2019s an awful lot of mainframes and cobol out there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">As HfS\u2019s Phil Fersht recently wrote<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span class=\"s1\">When you consider only $15 Billion is being spent on public cloud services (IaaS) this year and $ 1 trillion being spent on services tied to traditional services delivery, there is a huge amount of \u201clegacy\u201d IT and BPO business in play \u2013 for another decade and beyond \u2013 to enable the enterprise digital experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s amazing to think that less than 100 years ago people would go by horse drawn\u00a0carriage to see people turning arrays of lights on and off in Times\u00a0Square on a Saturday night as\u00a0\u2018advertainment\u2019. The pace of change has sped up enormously just within this century alone: as an example\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s2\">AWS delivered the first storage service (Amazon S3) in the spring of\u00a02006\u00a0and compute (Amazon EC2) in the fall of that year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">For the services world the twin speed world we live in of legacy IT and digital evolution has some similarities to the past era of\u00a0boiler makers and electricians\u00a0 &#8211; today most of the work is in keeping the steam boilers ever more\u00a0efficient in the enterprise world, but everyone knows the increasingly automated grid is evolving fast. Making the\u00a0decisions of what to focus on with staff and technology &#8211; what skill sets are needed and how and where to apply them &#8211; is doubly difficult when for decades\u00a0most of your waking hours have been focused on &#8216;busy work\u2019 to keep IT systems running. Quote to cash isn\u2019t going to go away but it is certain to evolve\u00a0and be ever more connected to other parts of the digital continuum most companies now have in focus strategically and aspire to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">Where steam\u00a0power was rigid, brittle and\u00a0inflexible despite\u00a0enormous power generation, eventually \u2018\u00a0always on\u2019 electrical\u00a0power\u00a0provided plug and play secondary, tertiary and on usages (light, power, heat, production lines etc). This is the\u00a0analogy the services sector are\u00a0increasingly aware of and where\u00a0\u2018core digital\u2019 is\u00a0arguably emerging to\u00a0supersede\u00a0\u2018IT\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">These are absolutely fascinating times, not least\u00a0because\u00a0this new world allows an astounding pace of innovation and appetite\u00a0for the new. Steam power didn\u2019t go away of course &#8211; as late as the 1960\u2019s steam locomotives were the way people travelled by rail, and the electricity I am\u00a0consuming to type this post may well have some steam\u00a0generated electrons\u00a0commingled. As the\u00a0transition and automation of older services yield to newer digital needs<\/span> <span class=\"s1\">here at HfS\u00a0we will be commenting and informing on\u00a0where the power and growth centers of the &#8216;as a service\u2019 world opportunities are.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s easy to make a\u00a0compelling case that\u00a0\u2018digital\u2019\u00a0will ultimately replace what was once\u00a0\u2018IT\u2019 at some point in the future as the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-4514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-transformation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watching out for the rapid evolution of core digital business changes - 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