RON TOLIDO

It’s interesting to see how Agile principles currently enjoy a state of obvious Renaissance. Or should we say Epiphany? To our mild surprise, there is a whole new generation of both clients and IT professionals that seemingly just today discovered the virtues of Agile. This despite all the heroic efforts of 80′s and 90′s pioneers such as James Martin and Tom Gilb and an Agile Manifesto that still resides on a by now slightly anachronistic web site.

Agile is back in the spotlights. Don’t worry though, we won’t bore you all over again with the basics of frequent iteration, time-boxing, intense collaboration and self-steering, scrumming teams. Instead – in true Agile style – let’s focus on the deltas: what is different nowadays?

First of all, despite the newcomers, Agile by now is a completely established, mature practice with many organizations embracing it as their default approach to creating and implementing solutions. There is also a wealth of practical experience, even on how to apply Agile in complex, multi-shored situations. About time to stop the evangelizing, although there is an almost completely autonomous micro-economy of Agile Gurus, producing vast amounts of books (no topic that is more inviting to the aspiring IT writer) and speaking on series of conferences across the world in which Agile Gurus convert the already converted.

Guys (and girl): here’s your wakeup call: you’ve done it. Your mission is completed. Victory is yours, Agile is the new normal. So let’s focus just a bit more on actually delivering agile projects, rather than writing about how to do them, shall we?

Also, let’s realize there are certain project areas that won’t necessarily benefit from an Agile approach right from the start. Although we might all be shallows by now, we’d better realize there is a category of systems that are robust, predictable and have extremely stable requirements. TRAIN applications (rather than CAR or SCOOTER applications) are better supported by well-chosen, slow moments of introspection and upfront thinking and specification: doing things right the first time – when it’s feasible – may save a lot of time and effort every now and then. Having said that, there are very few development efforts that won’t benefit from step-wise, risk-driven delivery in the next phases.

Furthermore, looking at Agile practices themselves, there are some clear changes on their way, most notably the move away from its comfort zone of plain, custom software engineering. New tools are being applied to create agility layers on top of the established, not so flexible core applications landscape. Think business model-driven automation, lightweight ERP interfaces such as DUET Enterprise, mobile platforms, business process management suites and next-gen visual BI tools.

The quick growth of SaaS marketplaces also brings profound changes, as catalogue-based delivery of standard, multi-tenant solutions puts requirements management in a very different light, if any (much more about this next week). Instead of gathering requirements, prioritizing them and implementing them in subsequent sprints of software development, we start from the vanilla solution. Then we enhance it through agility layers – where necessary and possible – to fit the desired value scenarios. This seems like a far cry from the original ideas of software engineering, but actually the roots of Agile methodologies such as Scrum very much focus on what needs to change, rather than what needs to be build. It just takes a slightly different mind-set.

Finally, the on-going consumerization of IT has equipped many business users with their own tools. And they know how to use them too. Self-service BI, visual mashup builders, configurable portals and business rules systems enables them to reshape their own information reality on the fly, over and over again. Über-agility, if you like, with every individual running their own little scrums and sprints at will.

So yes: Agile is more alive than ever. But its world sure looked different yesterday and further changes are destined to occur. All very appropriate indeed.

They’re all residing on my laptop, smartphone and tablet now. Like four quarreling sisters, SkyDrive, iCloud, Dropbox and Google Drive are ostentatiously competing for attention. As a consumerized IT user – in my own micro space – I am confronted with exactly the same question that enterprises face more and more: what shall I put in whose cloud?

As always, a simple answer would be the best. It would be great to just choose one superior supplier – say Acme SuperCloud 9 – and stick to it for all cloud business. Unfortunately, reality may turn out to be more delicate and a situational approach will often need to be taken.

Much like the way I find myself currently dealing with various, personal cloud storage options. As most of my media is still brought to me through Apple channels and devices, I turn to iCloud to hold it for me. For all the materials I often need mobile access to (I am a Windows Phone 7 user), I prefer SkyDrive. For open documents that I want to collaboratively work on with others, Google Drive from now on is my natural choice. DropBox has the slightly unrewarding, but in fact glorious role of being a general backup. Then – of course – there is a limited, but crucial collection of confidential data assets that in no way should be stored anywhere outside my own premises. I keep them on my own machine in an encrypted data vault and have them backed up by a Time Capsule.

Clearly, reputation is everything here as the various financial plans for cloud storage tend to gradually resolve around one and the same benchmark. But the track record in real life is even more determining: if one of the solution installs improperly, crashes just a few times, is too often unavailable or – the horror – loses data, it will mercilessly be replaced by one of the other cloud sisters in the house. That set aside – assuming that robustness and trust are being dealt with sufficiently by providers – I can explore and switch my options freely, increasing my benefits from the cloud over time, while learning more and more.

For enterprises, at their own scale of reality, it is a very similar play. There is no specific point in selecting one cloud provider to deal with all purposes. There is also no urge to determine right now what computing, storage and application loads should be moved to the cloud and what should stay on premise. Possibly with the exception of start-ups and certain small and medium businesses, the hybrid scenario will be the de facto standard in the forthcoming years.

We will need to move forward step by step, opportunistically weighing our options, considering new paths as they emerge, leaving the unreliable and dusty ones, improving while we learn. Data sovereignty considerations may keep enterprises from moving their applications to a public cloud that is run from another continent: understood, run the delicate ones on a regional cloud or keep the crucial data on premise and process it on a public cloud. Two years from now, regulations may have been changed and options with better economies of scale become feasible. You may not be ready to fully migrate these vital, but ill performing client / server analytical applications to the cloud: fine, just replace the data crunching parts and have them run by a superfast, specialized Big Data cloud.

The options are limitless and smart navigation is key. Come to think of it, we may want to coin the concept of the Situational Cloud right here, right now as a flexible way of benefiting from various, evolving cloud options, supported by a set of well-defined design patterns or ‘cloud stereotypes’.

Providers need to understand that the ability for enterprises to effortlessly navigate the evolving cloud landscape is instrumental to broader adoption. I can easily switch between my personal storage clouds because they all have been integrated in the same way in my file system. Similarly, cloud providers need to move to joint, open standards around how to store and compute in the cloud. This may temporarily feel to them like cannibalism, but soon the increased usage of the cloud by enterprises will bring them the desired additional revenues.

In the end, we want to be able to have different cloud deployment scenarios at our fingertips and literally play with them: seamlessly changing as insights, alternatives, rules and regulations, technologies and business cases evolve. Some enterprises will prefer the details of such a situational approach be hidden, for example through automated, policy-based tools or by partnering with a specialized provider that takes care of the orchestration activities. Other enterprises may choose to stay in control for now and will strive for maximized transparency around the attributes of different cloud options. They accept that choices will need to be made and frequently re-assessed.

Then again, making choices can sometimes be very simple. Aspiring and already quite successful startup GreenButton enables applications even literally with a green button: if you push it, external cloud power – running on Windows Azure, Amazon or vCloud – will be activated on the fly to speed up calculations, analytics and graphics rendering. If you want to know what pushing the button additionally will cost (or save, think about it), all the information is there to make the decision.

Knowing what buttons to push when, and have all the insight for support: it’s really what the Situational Cloud is about. Let’s go and push a few of these buttons.

It’s still an established benchmark for any application developer building a web shop: before starting to discuss structure, activity flow and lay-out, you have a look at the world’s leading example and see what’s hot. What would Amazon do?

Well, they are doing it again. With the launch of the AWS Marketplace, Amazon shows any IT department what they are up against in the forthcoming years: a neatly organized, easy accessible catalogue of open, highly standardized IT services, ready to deploy in seconds, paid per use, all on one invoice. And – of course – at incredibly competitive prices.

I have often discussed with our clients how quick – and through what steps – they could be benefiting from the public cloud. And the same advice would be coming back over and over again: “We’re not saying your entire IT landscape should be on Amazon next year. But for sure, they are quickly defining a new normal in terms of how fast, easy and cost-effective you should be able to deploy new solutions”.

That benchmark just became more tangible and solid than ever before. Go at the AWS marketplace yourself and browse around a bit. Will your IT department be able to provide the same catalogue, with the same self-service, usage-based pricing and deployment in minutes? And even so important: are your prices more or less on par with what Amazon is offering?

More improvements should be expected. It seems like a missed opportunity not to present the AWS marketplace in exactly the same way as the Amazon web shop (that would have made the point even more). And for now, you can only imagine what will happen when more and more business applications will become available (did anybody say recommendation engine?) through the very same marketplace.

For now, the bar has been raised. We are not saying the internal IT market place of your organization should be just as good as Amazon’s. Not yet, that is. But a new normal has been defined and we’d all better have a good look. Happy shopping.

Guess we are all in agreement by now? As Tim Cook confirmed this week when launching the new iPad (not ‘iPad 3’ not ‘iPad HD’ not iPad Maxiumus Optimus Prime GT 7.3.1 X, just iPad, sounds simple, makes even more sense) we have clearly entered the Post-PC era. The App Effect changes our everyday lives and – in the wake of that – the way enterprises connect to their clients, employees and partners. Enterprise Mobility thus tops the priority list of CEO’s and CIO’s the like. Strategies are not only being made, but are executed on as well.

It is a quickly emerging area that will change our industry. So it is only logical for a company like ours to launch a specialized, global service line that builds on Enterprise Mobility best practices and accelerators that we acquired throughout the globe. Much to discuss about the topic and we invite you to do so, together with us in the forthcoming months. As an appetizer, here are 7 signs that we have come to appreciate as indicators for enterprises that actually understand the power of mobility and the post-PC era:

1. Not Another Channel. Enterprises need to understand the transformative power of mobility. A smartphone or tablet is not a trimmed-down version of a laptop: it inspires us to think far beyond the boundaries of current processes, organizational structures and established management theories. There is nothing against a mobile version of a website or an internal application. Good start. But paving the cow path just won’t bring the potential benefits that a more disruptive approach will.

2. On Par Experience. We are all spoiled consumers of apps that excite and engage us us with compelling user experiences. The thing is, when it comes to Enterprise mobile apps, organizations can’t really afford to produce anything less than that. An app with a clumsy and suboptimal user experience will annoy us, then have us quickly turn straight against it (and we might even share that with the rest of the world). You don’t necessarily have to win design prices with your new mobile apps. Just remember to never, ever go below what is considered on par at the App Store.

3. Inside & (even more) Outside. For sure, the mobility revolution brings excellent opportunities for enterprises to redefine the way their employees work and how they collaborate with their partners. So by all means, define and execute your B2B and B2E mobility strategies. But don’t forget that the real magic may be happening outside, with your customers. One single, well-chosen consumer app may create many more benefits than all of your internally focused apps together.

4. Trains versus Scooters. Mobile apps have a different lifecycle: they often need to be created quickly and should be updated frequently with useful additions. These dynamics are different from what the organization is typically used to, both at the IT department but just as much at the business side. It is a matter of understanding the difference between a Train and a Scooter (here is our manifesto, in case you haven’t read it yet) and creating the governance within the enterprise to deal with it.

5. BYO Reality. Face it: where you still may keep your employees satisfied – sort of – for a year or two with the company-issued laptop, you won’t cut it with mobile devices. They will bring their own, no matter what. Obviously, this is also the case with your customers who may change their preferences overnight in this whimsical, highly consumerized market. Ask RIM. Ask Microsoft and Nokia. Ask Apple (even Cook couldn’t believe his own success). Ask Amazon. So better make sure you have the development platform, the management tools and the agility to deal with the next craze in mobile devices.

6. Supersize. The most successful enterprise mobile apps seem to bring together everything that currently drives innovation and growth. Apps are supersized with real-time analytics and intelligence, business process management, rules-driven decision support, web services, composite workflows, personalization and – of course – social interaction. To top it off, mobile apps are particularly suitable to explore a (public) cloud strategy as they may require extremely scalable computing resources with a minimum of upfront investment.

7. Let Them Build. There will be many places inside and outside the organization with great ideas – and needs – for new mobile applications. It is tempting, particularly from the perspective of the central IT department, to carefully gather all requirements into a prioritized long list of mobile initiatives and then start to build the apps, one by one. But that will not do justice to the potential of the crowd, nor does it provide a short enough time-to-market. Focus on building a ‘hub’ platform instead, with a catalogue of enterprise-level services to catapult new mobile apps that are secure, well-integrated, manageable and consistent. Then actively support and grow the ecosystem around you in building the actual apps. True mobilization indeed.