by Iris Boers
Vivit EMEA Local User Group Liaison
Business and IT have, in the past, used times of crisis to adapt and transform themselves for the better. While COVID-19 has created a ruckus within the human society across religions, races, geographies, countries, and continents and has undeniably had a devastating effect on business, and life itself, it will also be a catalyst for change, compelling organizations to rethink their long-term operations and spending as well as their business models, working cultures and journeys of digital transformation within an enterprise for the future.
Even if COVID-19 is currently seen as an acute threat to our economy, the current situation also serves as an indicator for the future viability of a company: an indicator of where companies currently stand in terms of digital transformation. It is an indicator of how flexibly they are reacting to massive market changes and also of how they are able to use their data. The coronavirus crisis is transforming what was previously an abstract topic for many people, digitalization, into a concrete mission - with concrete problems and concrete solutions. No matter what our new normality will look like after the virus, whether more folks will stick with grocery delivery, having gotten used to the convenience, whether many will continue to work more in the home office or to what extent business travel will once again be part of the business routine - whatever those new developments are, it’s clear that IT-transformation and digitalization will play a significant role. For the success of digital transformation initiatives in companies, it is important to balance agility, speed, risk, business value, and quality, along with access to back-end systems of record.
Agility and Speed
No one can say with certainty how the economic and social situation will develop in the coming months. This makes it all the more important to accelerate developments, new products, and services while remaining flexible and open to changes in plans. The demand for high-velocity software development to support digital transformation across multimodal platforms increases complexity radically. As a result, organizations will need to shift to agile process adoption, automation, and analytics to support business execution, continuous quality, performance, deployment, and security.
To succeed, agile DevOps responsiveness to business stakeholder needs via IT/business collaboration end to end (including modernization and systems of record) is key.
Recommendation: Review and address iterative, continuous development, and testing approaches from functional through security to performance testing and automation gaps to create continuous quality across teams.
To learn more about continuous integration and delivery and Model-Based Testing for ALM Octane, register now for the upcoming webinar presented by the United Kingdom & Ireland Local User Groups (LUGs) on May 27th.
Security, Risk, and Governance — Protect Apps, Identities, and Data
Digital measures to combat the pandemic, such as the tracing apps, for example, make it clear that the relevance of data, its use and the discussion about its protection, is taking on a whole new significance for society, politics and also for companies. Any organization without a plan to prioritize the protection and management of sensitive and personal data place their reputation, brand, and high-value data at great risk. It must also meet challenges such as mergers and acquisitions, digital transformation to the cloud, and the growing, global, requirement to safeguard personally identifiable information.
Recommendation: Businesses must understand that data discovery, classification, and controls for both structured and unstructured data are as important to security as the techniques used to secure it.
If you would like to learn more about how Cybersecurity and Privacy can go hand in hand and how to protect IT ecosystems and reduce risk to on-premises, hybrid, or cloud environments for all identities, register here now for the Micro Focus Virtual Universe. From Tuesday, May 19 through Thursday, May 21, attendees will have access to the highest quality content delivered by Micro Focus executives, product experts, partners, customers, and our community. You’ll have multiple opportunities for 1:1 meetings and product demos—all tailored to meet your business needs and your professional development and educational goals – and at no cost – the participation in the virtual conference entirely free of charge. Vivit Worldwide as a sponsor will have a virtual booth within the Digital Transformation Zone, so come and visit us and learn more about the Community
To conclude, COVID-19 has brought the world to its knees shattering the businesses and economies worldwide. However, these challenges provide an opportunity for new businesses to flourish based on a new digital reality. Digitalization has found a new meaning and it is going to reach many new areas. This is the perfect time to focus on digital transformation by realizing the necessities accelerating it.
