Uber, Tinder, and Facebook have defined a new normal in business by continuously delivering amazing experiences that are updated based on customer needs and demands. Amazon introduces a new feature or function every second. Every two months, 50% of Google’s components are pushed to production. Netflix uses automated tools to stress-test its infrastructure for vulnerabilities and problems before they affect customers. And, when Tata needs to provision IT infrastructure to support new initiatives, they can do it in weeks instead of months.
These examples all have something in common: they are innovative solutions that were not possible 15 years ago. In addition, they demonstrate extraordinary agility. This is not a coincidence. As we approach another new decade in the 21st century, agility and innovation are more important than ever. But how can an enterprise deliver them? The answer lies in your making your technology stack nimble. Let’s look at ways you can do that.
When most of us think of innovative technology, it’s the “bells and whistles” that come to mind. Basically, those are the aspects touched, seen, and consumed by users and customers. Uber, Tinder, Amazon, and Facebook are, therefore, hailed as the greatest innovations of the digital age. Although this opinion is understandable, it is not exactly accurate. These apps were not pulled out of a magician’s hat fully formed and ready to use. Core systems and back-end infrastructure enable them to run. Essentially, without these systems and infrastructure, rideshare requests based on geolocation, swipe left and right, one-click order, and connect with friends would not exist.
Innovation is not just in the hands of a device holder. There is innovative technology that has much greater long-term impacts. The Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Tata examples demonstrate that innovation is happening everywhere. Amazon’s continuous delivery, Google’s rapid component release, and the automated and accelerated infrastructure testing and provisioning of Netflix and Tata are also innovations. These tech and industry giants use them to deliver engaging apps, digital transformation, new revenue generation, and extreme competitive advantage.
In an age when digital disruption is the order of the day, business agility is how the world’s most successful companies thrive. An agile and nimble business that can change on a dime or deliver performance and results as soon as they’re required is able to provide customer and user preferences, expectations, and satisfaction.
Business agility and innovation go hand in hand, and they can even drive each other. Innovation offers agility and agility inspires innovation. For example, responses to a survey indicate that customers would like the option to communicate live with a customer service representative, so a company integrates video chat into the next iteration of its website. Or an app that makes it possible to apply for a mortgage in less than 15 minutes enables a company to use the time saved from not processing the applications manually to offer insurance or auto loans.
A key component of successful innovation and business agility is agile IT. Exploiting the latest technology such as AI and machine learning, robotic process automation, IoT, and big data to deliver innovation and agility without affecting performance requires IT agility. Open systems are one way to deliver a nimble tech stack and another way is the cloud. A third way is the combination of open systems on the cloud.
The businesses that have disrupted their markets in the last decade or so have had the benefits of starting from scratch and creating an IT infrastructure that is based in the cloud. Chances are your business has been around longer and is dealing with IT infrastructures that are a combination of mainframes, relational databases, transaction monitors, and J2EE application servers. You don’t have the luxury of building from scratch in the cloud because years of transaction processing, decades-old data, and customer records might be lost—along with the software that enables you to exploit them.
The good news is that there is a viable, quick, and cost-effective way to acquire the IT agility needed to run a modern business without starting over in the cloud or ripping out and replacing systems. TmaxSoft OpenFrame, Tibero, Tmax, and JEUS and WebtoB supply the performance, speed and availability needed to move critical applications and data to the cloud. The result is a fast, flexible foundation for quickly responding to market change and future innovation requirements with no proprietary lock-in.
With OpenFrame rehosting, mission critical and core applications are migrated off the mainframe to open systems, the cloud, or open systems in the cloud. Your business logic and user interfaces don’t change and there is no downtime. Tibero enables the stable and efficient management of your database management system and guarantees high-performance transaction processing. Tmax delivers performance, reliability, availability, and manageability to mission critical OLTP workloads. And with the dynamic duo of JEUS and WebtoB, you get a high-performance web application server and web server built for today’s high-transaction workloads, enabling a more flexible use of resources while maximizing system responsiveness and performance.
With a nimble technology stack provided by TmaxSoft solutions, your enterprise has the agile IT backbone you need for innovation and business agility. Plus, you can take advantage of modern technology, such as reusable components, microservices, and containers, so they are ready for whatever the future holds.
For more information about how you can use TmaxSoft solutions to chart your innovative, agile path, visit tmaxsoft.com.
Raghu Radhakrishnan is the CEO & Managing Director of TmaxSoft India. With more than 27 years of sales and marketing experience in the IT industry, he drives global enterprises to adopt TmaxSoft technologies and help them solve their perennial problem of high cost of ownership. He joined TmaxSoft in 2015 and has held senior level positions with IBM, Modi Olivetti and Digital. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India.