Embrace SaaS, Cloud with Cybersecurity for modernising legacy Enterprise systems

A step to Digital

We have all heard of Digital economy as exploiting Social, Mobility, Big Data, IoT, Analytics and Cloud amongst others. And, if not all, at least one of these technology capabilities is surely deployed in most organizations. More often than not, as an add-on and integrated with existing legacy applications. Legacy packaged and bespoke applications have been the bulwark which has helped many organisations for long to differentiate with its native IP. This is not so surprisingly a trait associated with many asset-heavy organizations.

But, is this native IP still a differentiator? Are organizations with legacy applications able to compete against the new asset-light competitors who seem to be able to dynamically bring forth and adapt new capabilities with ease? After all, the asset-light organisations are merely piggy-backing on the capabilities offered by asset-heavy organisations and yet, it is the asset-heavy organisations that are seemingly impacted and in catch-up mode. How these asset-light competitors are so nimble, able to grow fast and make more margins?

It is easier for Start-up companies to use Cloud based apps since it provides a great opportunity to leverage “pay as you go” models and use precious investor cash/capital to invest on core business. Cloud based apps providers continually incorporate new capabilities which are then released to all customers at the same time. What was once native IP is now available to all and no longer a differentiator. What’s more, there is a lot more to learn from the functionalities imbibed through learning from other organizations. It is time for Asset-heavy traditional organizations to engage in dual-play of asset-heavy as value and asset-light business as a competitive weapon to transcend the digital economy.

For established asset-heavy organizations with an overwhelming legacy applications portfolio, this suite of cloud apps provides a path to “Cloud enable” their applications in order to achieve the improved agility and time-to-market which otherwise may not be currently available with legacy applications. Cloud enablement is one of the ways to going Digital. There are a number of established and emerging companies offering Enterprise grade apps on the Cloud for the most common business process across industries.

For the most common front-end business processes such as Marketing, Sales, Services and Customer Experience Management: You have Salesforce or Netsuite for CRM; you have Genesys, Netsuite or Adobe for Customer Experience management & Marketing; and, you have Tabware or Real Asset management for Services & Asset maintenance.

For the enabling business processes such as Business Performance Management, Manufacturing or Production or Asset management, Supply chain management, R & D/Engineering and Product Lifecycle management: You have Infor or Asset Panda for Asset management; you have PLEX or Epicor for Manufacturing; you have Epicor or Financial force for Supply chain management; you have Autodesk or PTC for Product lifecycle management; you have Onshape or Autodesk for Engineering & Design; and, there is the choice of ProjectPlace or LiquidPlanner for Project Management.

For the supporting processes are Finance, HR, Sourcing & Procurement, Sustainability, Health, Safety and Security: You have Sapphire or Workday for Finance; you have Workday or naturalhr for HR; you have GEP Procurement suite or Netsuite for Sourcing & Procurement; you have Peppermint or Clio for Legal processes; you have Metricstream or RSA Archer for Audit & Compliance; you have Gensuite or medgate for Environment & Sustainability; you have the choice of Alfresco, Onbase or Docushare for Content management; and there is Proactis, Epicor or Supplier 360 for Supplier Relationship management. And there are many more and some even tailored to specific industries.

The above list is neither an exhaustive one nor is it an endorsement of any of the applications’ capabilities. Of course, adoption is subject to (i) the ability to meet the business requirements and (ii) the capability to integrate to the existing IT environment. You also have a number of Industry specific business applications available on the cloud. SAP, Oracle and Microsoft now offer their software products on the cloud too.

Big data, BI & Analytics is its own space in terms of the range and sophistication of analytics outcomes that could be achieved for business growth as well as costs optimization. In addition, IT4IT and Cybersecurity management are essential to running the IT. When applications are hosted on the cloud, it is also absolutely essential to establish a robust Cloud Orchestration, Integration and Management platform to ensure that the organization’s IT systems are not compromised.

Whilst the common business processes applications are available on the cloud, most traditional organizations would have other business applications that are based on packaged applications or bespoke applications developed for specific business purpose. Over time, they would have been customised or adapted to the unique needs of the corporation thereby forming an IP differentiator. They are perhaps still unique and still a differentiator but Business units would need cloud-like performance agility & scalability.

So, when cloud enablement of business applications is accepted as essential, what are the choices?

Existing Packaged Apps to Packaged Cloud Apps - This choice is about adaptation of your existing packaged apps and move to the Cloud Apps offered by your applications provider. This could be done as Applications hosting on the cloud or move to the providers’ cloud apps.

Legacy Apps migration to Cloud Apps - Legacy bespoke apps have the advantage of providing unique differentiators which have been built over a period of time and where feasible, a migration of legacy application to cloud apps would be beneficial. A careful assessment is needed of the choice; to be unique vs. the need to be agile taking advantage of the new functionality that could be available from cloud based apps.

Legacy bespoke apps modernisation to cloud - Where the functionality is unique and the cost-benefit assessments work in favour, modernisation of the applications running on legacy platforms and transformation to the cloud may be the best choice. In the process, differentiation continues to be maintained until a cloud application is available in the market that delivers the needed functionality.

Legacy bespoke apps migration to the cloud - Simple modernisation of the existing legacy applications to work on an Infrastructure cloud (Public or Private) with some modernisation of the front-end.

Choosing a hybrid of the above is also an option. Each of the above options or a hybrid of the above comes with its own risks as well as benefits. Costs-benefits analysis, payback period and ROI are always a constant. Key essential aspects to consider when making the choices are:

- Migration duration and the sequencing of applications that have to migrated

- Managing the ever growing interfaces between the Apps on the many cloud platforms

- How many providers and how to manage

- Orchestration of changes when there are Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures

- Applications security testing and Security management across the many cloud platforms

- Legal and/or Contractual undertakings with end customers

- Data protection and Compliance management

- Orchestration and management platform for the hybrid clouds; on premises and/or cloud

- Delivering and integrating new applications with the in house applications and cloud based applications

- Elements of Big data and analytics to be in-house or on the cloud

- Identity and Access management across the clouds

According to this Gartner report (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3119717), worldwide spending will grow 7.5% y-on-y which is based on key trends such as Digital business related market dynamics, Enterprise applications modernisation and transition to consumption based models amongst others.

Security, Privacy, Data protection and compliance is not just a key issue but also quite an emotive issue and not to be considered trivial. The Cloud Standards Customer Council in this report, http://www.cloud-council.org/deliverables/CSCC-Security-for-Cloud-Computing-10-Steps-to-Ensure-Success.pdf, provides a good view on what to watch out for and steps to overcome. Much is also covered by enisa (https://resilience.enisa.europa.eu/cloud-computing-certification) in a lot of ground-breaking pre-assessments on cloud computing adoption.

In Summary, cloud-enablement of business applications offers organizations the much needed scalability, agility and improved time-to-market to be successful in the digital economy. With the right strategy & plan, selection of the desired right end-state and assurance of security & privacy, traditional enterprises may well leap-frog the digital economy with the right mix of asset-heavy and asset-light businesses.

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About the Author

This article was first published by Jagadish Rao Raghavendra on February 20, 2017

Jagadish is a Strategic Board adviser, senior Executive leader with specialisation in reimagining business models; who has been successful at building and/or turnaround Practice advisory, Presales, Sales enablement, Solution consulting capabilities for:

- Applications & Enterprise applications

- Modernising and Transformation to a secure hybrid Cloud

- Service Integration and Management in a multi-cloud environment

- Digital workplace solutions

- Digital transformation using IoT, IIoT, Big Data, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Drones and Robots

- IT Infrastructure services

More recently, Jagadish has influenced re-imagining a digitally enabled business model for a leading enterprise

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