5 Enterprise Technology trends to watch for in 2018
and one that might surprise you….
If your enterprise is engaged in a digital transformation strategy, you can’t afford to miss these hot new tech trends in 2018.
1. Continuous Rollback
We’ve all heard of continuous integration and continuous delivery. If you’re a sophisticated technology enterprise, you likely have all your source code stored in Bitbucket being pipelined to a Jenkins server hosted on AWS to build a Docker container that you deploy to a Kubernetes swarm so that you can execute an Ansible script to deploy your Node.js package to your onsite micro-data centre.
“Of course we do continuous delivery,” you say!
But what’s your rollback strategy? More importantly, what’s your continuous rollback strategy?
That sophisticated set of sequences doesn’t stop itself. Once you’ve started the Rube-Goldberg machine how do you take it back?
Continuous Rollback services are like a big boot that you can throw at your toaster when you smell something burning. A good CR service won’t just put the fire out, it will reset the fire alarm and make you a new slice of toast.
Sophisticated CR services will also support rollback chaining. Used judicially, this leads to the associated technique of Continuous Throwback, allowing your end users to relive the experience of a time when your app was great again.
2. Self-Service Back-Office
The benefits of web self-service systems are well known. Reduced wait time and improved customer satisfaction are but a few.
However, submitting a web self-service form may only be the beginning of a long process for a customer. Often times, a form submission may include many complex, tedious, and time consuming back-office tasks before a request is fulfilled. Delays in processing these tasks can often lead to multiple customer queries concerning the progress of their request. This may even include grandiose claims by the customer that they can do your job better then you.
Haven’t you every wanted to see them try?
Self-Service Back-Office techniques effectively allow the customer to go “behind the counter” to fulfil their request. Don’t just let your customers pick their own fruit. Let them plant it, fertilise it, and water it too.
With a Self-Service Back-Office, your customers can get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it, with the added satisfaction of knowing they are the masters of their own destiny.
3. CizSecOps
If the ratio of Information Security professionals to developers in any enterprise is likely to be 100:1, then the ratio of security professionals to end users may be in the realm of 1,000,000:1. Given that security is everyones job, why not engage end users to act as Citizen Security Operators. This is the fundamental philosophy behind CizSecOps.
A CizSecOps approach provides significant benefit by increasing the surface area of security oversight for your entire enterprise. Fully embracing CizSecOps requires an openness and mindset that may go against the grain of seasoned security professionals. Successful CizSecOps environments have the confidence and maturity to pull back the curtain on their infrastructure for all to see. Your citizen security operators may even have your root password!
This may seem scary at first, and perhaps even a little crazy, however all successful relationships are built on trust. A CizSecOps environment is no exception.
4. Agile Risk Management
Traditional risk management approaches are heavy handed, time consuming, and not a whole lot of fun. Why not make it agile?
Non-agile risk management typically leads to significant investment of time and energy into mitigating anticipated risks.
But what if that risk never materialises? You’ve wasted all that time for nothing.
Agile Risk Management advocates a more pragmatic, reactive approach that seeks to reduce the time spent mitigating events that may never happen (which they probably won’t). Instead, Agile Risk Management simply deals with the problem once it becomes a certainty.
We can’t see the future, so stop trying to, and just live in the moment.
It will probably all work out for the best.
5. Lean Disaster Recovery
Lean Disaster Recovery is all about changing your mindset. Instead of viewing the absence of a disaster recovery strategy as a risk, why not consider it an opportunity for a clean slate? Anyone who’s worked in an enterprise long enough surely has a mile long list of things they’d do differently if they had the chance. Of course, it’s much harder to implement change without a catalyst.
A critical disaster, like a fire in your data centre (aided by an accelerant that police have deemed “suspicious”) can have the added benefit of providing a much needed excuse for change.
Obviously, having no disaster recovery plan for your enterprise is reckless, but when crafting your plan, ask yourself, “Do I really need this?”
Your organisation likely has data coming out of its ears, but how much of it is truly useful? Do you really need those Word docs from 2016? That PowerPoint presentation someone slapped together in 2003? That database of active customer orders?
Maybe….. but maybe not.
Why not take the leap and find out.
