In the previous blogs as part of this series, we discussed the role of cloud and data as organizations embark on a platform business model journey. The cloud is the engine for the platform, and the data makes the engine hum. The third necessary component is the collection of user interfaces that expose the business workflows and deliver the user experience. These three technology areas are behind many business transformations, most notably those within the financial services sector.
This year alone, Forrester forecasts tech spending by banks to achieve double-digit growth. (1) And, Gartner concurs with this sentiment that technology investments will be significant, forecasting that worldwide IT spending will grow more than 5% across all sectors this year, reaching almost $4.5 trillion—as organizations turn to more strategic long-term programs over reactionary project-based spending. (2)
As noted in the IBM IBV 2022 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets report, a top finding included that a modern architecture delivers optimal interoperability and portability to support the deployment and management of workloads across multiple compute environments while helping financial services organizations meet security and compliance requirements. (3)
The modern, interoperable, and portable experiences — delivered in the form of web and mobile applications, APIs, and microservices — connect the users (and other applications or systems) to the platform, on the cloud, where the data exists. The applications essentially bring the user interface, business logic, workflows, and transactions to life for the users on all sides of the platform.
McKinsey research suggests that great developers are eight times more productive than average ones. (4) These developers not only know how to build modern apps to support the platform business model but also do so with resiliency and security in mind.
Technology must be resilient
Technology shouldn’t be used for technology’s sake; it should be employed with the following attributes in mind: (5)
- Flexible: The technology should fit or create the business infrastructure and workflows to support the operational requirements necessary to achieve those objectives.
- Usable: The technology should be deployable, configurable, securable, maintainable, monitorable, and tunable to ensure it supports the resiliency requirements required to achieve those objectives.
- Capable: The technology should be able to scale, grow, and adapt in the most efficient manner possible to support the sustainability requirements necessary to achieve those objectives.
Security and compliance remain critical elements in DevOps
Turning a blind eye to security and compliance is a thing of the past. Successful organizations leverage information security as a competitive advantage:
- More than half of organizations incorporate security reviews into every phase of development. (6)
- Only a quarter of organizations continue to operate DevOps separately from security. (7)
- 39% of developers feel fully responsible for security in their organizations, while 32% said they shared the burden with other teams. (8)
Taos helps organizations take advantage of existing systems and data, improve automation, identify new areas of innovation, and build the tools and processes needed to promote new revenue growth while creating a path to the long-term future-fit and resilient organization expects to be in the years to come.
One example where Taos has succeeded includes the accelerated digital transformation program for a large financial institution based in California. (9) Throughout the project, the Taos team worked closely with the bank operations and technical teams to establish a modern DevOps framework, reduce build and operations efforts, and integrate, configure, and deploy critical security tools as part of the program. Some of the more notable results for this client include a 95% reduction in deployment times and a 40% improvement in developer productivity.
In another case, application developer Appetize selected Taos to assist in CI/CD automation and re-platforming to cloud-native services, allowing Appetize to leverage next-generation tooling and automation. (10)
For another customer operating in the legal services space, Taos helped to enable CI/CD and continuous automation so the client could quickly develop, test, and release new features to address rapidly-changing customer needs. (11)
As you embark on your own cloud-enabled, data-driven, app-focused platform business model journey, be sure to look to Taos to help you with some of your core program elements:
- DevSecOps now: Add security as a foundational element of your continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline operations.
- DevOps now: Turbocharge your DevOps initiatives with a scalable, flexible, efficient, on-demand DevOps-as-a-Service.
If you missed the other blog posts in this series, be sure to catch them all as they describe the value and requirements of employing a platform business model and the cloud and data’s role in making it all happen.
Citations:
1 – Banks Will Double Down On Innovation In 2022, Forbes, November 2022
2 – Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 5.1% in 2022, Gartner, January 2022
3 – 2022 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets, IBM Institute for Business Value, February 2022
4 – It’s Time to Reset the IT Talent Model, MIT Sloan, March 2020
5 – Financial Services Cloud Innovation is at the Strategic Core of Long-Term Growth, Taos, May 2022
8 – A maturing DevSecOps landscape: 2021 Global Survey results, GitLab, May 2021
9 – Case Study: Taos Accelerates a Digital Transformation for a Large Financial Institution, Taos, June 2022
10 – Case Study: Appetize called Taos when they needed to meet a Tight Deadline Migrating their Applications to Amazon Web Services, Taos, May 2022
11 – Case Study: Migrating Legacy Applications to GCP in record Time, Taos, April 2022