What does agility mean for information systems? An information system will undoubtedly be considered agile if, in addition to robustly supporting the company's business model, it can react quickly and efficiently to new business needs.
As soon as you mention digital transformation, another word comes to mind: agility. And more particularly the agility of the information system, the heart of the reactor of business transformation. All cases of successful transformation have a common denominator: the ability to accelerate time-to-market for new offerings, from the design stage through to promotion and distribution.
In other words, to have an agile information system, you need to strike the best possible balance between the needs associated with the company's value proposition and the consumption of resources required to achieve it ... as quickly as possible, while controlling the risks. This is the definition imposed on us by the turn taken by the digital economy in the 21st century. It is also the one that most highlights cloud computing as a catalyst for transformation for those businesses that have been able to seize the opportunities for agility that it presents. After all, we're talking about agility in the plural. The Cloud makes it easier to apply the four values of the "Agile Manifesto" to agile software development, but also offers other levers of agility to reduce costs and/or optimise coverage of needs.
These levers can be classified into four categories of agility:
1. Financial agility (which can lead to strategic agility)
2. Operational agility in resource allocation and collaboration
3. Operational agility in software service delivery
4. Functional agility through continuous digital service management
From capex to opex
For Financial Agility, the first perceived advantage is to shift the weight of the IT budget from Capex (cost of acquiring resources) to Opex (operating expenses), via the leasing and on-demand service aspect.
By reducing initial cash requirements through IAAS, the strategic agility of companies increases, enabling them to react more quickly and take more risks on innovative projects to exploit emerging markets or react to unexpected competition. If the results aren't there, the company won't have to pay off a heavy IT investment over the long term, and will decide to reallocate its financial resources to more promising commercial activities. This choice provides operational agility. This is thanks to the ability provided by the cloud computing service to adjust the infrastructure to requirements, ensuring that IT resources are sized just right to guarantee performance in the event of success, heavy traffic loads or peaks in activity.
Secondly, in addition to reducing costs, by outsourcing its IS, the company will have flexibility and mobility in the allocation of resources. This ranges from the reallocation of computer rooms to the reallocation of human resources. With no need for maintenance, the company will be able to train and retain IT talent who are more focused on identifying and implementing technology opportunities for the business.
The increased possibility of managing mobility, thanks to the emergence of lightweight terminals combined with the virtualisation of applications, also offers concrete support for implementing more agile modes of collaboration, with motivation and empowerment, within organisations.
Breaking down silos
Silos are an obstacle to transformation. The use of cloud computing is a lever for breaking down silos between business functions. By speeding up development, the IT Department can quickly demonstrate operational results to the stakeholders in the service project. And it can do all this while respecting the functional requirements expressed and without sacrificing the robustness, security and reliability of the target.
This objective can only be achieved if all the stakeholders, including those responsible for operating the product, are aligned and work together. Because the value of the service only exists if the service is delivered, the operational aspects of its entire lifecycle cannot be neglected in its design and development: scalability, version management, stability, update management, security/traceability/auditability, access control, etc.
The usefulness of Devops
This is what the "devops" concept aims to achieve by proposing implementation principles and tools designed to reduce IT service delivery times. Coupled with IAAS, the project team quickly has access to the infrastructure and development environments. It can set up a source management repository, install tools to automate compilation, unit and functional tests, product validation and performance tests on all new software bricks delivered, and so create the package needed to achieve continuous integration.
The development cycle will be shortened and improved by the rapid integration of changes made to the code and the automation of non-regression tests. IAAS also guarantees easier access for geographically distributed teams and the availability of computing power at the right time for the compilation of large applications and load tests, tasks that often consume a lot of execution resources, further reducing cycles.
Continuous integration: velocity at work
Continuous integration tools can themselves be available on the Cloud, in Paas or Saas mode, which further strengthens support for the concepts of "devops" and Agile development. Continuous integration encourages interaction between individuals and the production of quality software that works. But what about collaboration with the customer? The possibility of short, iterative delivery cycles with rapid feedback? Here again, the cloud helps to put in place continuous deployment, via easy access for customers to the platforms needed to deliver increments and also the battery of configuration and test automation tools for high-performance production release management (via IAAS, PAAS and SAAS type services). The aim is to industrialise deployments to the point where production releases can be carried out dozens of times a day, without service interruption. Adaptation to change can be rapid as soon as the disincentives associated with manual operations and communication errors disappear.
In this way, cloud computing services act as a catalyst for the concepts of 'devops' and 'agile development', in the sense that they bring about operational agility, not necessarily perceived by the organisation, which will lead to agility in the delivery of IT services.
However, there are still questions to be asked about the 'why' behind the service. Do we really need customised development for the functionality we are looking for? If so, where will the infrastructure to deliver it be located? Alternatively, can't we also have genuinely standardised environments, pre-packaged reusable components, a software factory for developers, so that they can concentrate solely on the features that will deliver differentiating value? Here again, the cloud acts as a catalyst, because it leads the organisation to ask itself the right questions and accelerates transformation.
Use and service come first
With the emergence of SaaS (Software As A Service), the focus has shifted back to the use of the service. However, the complexity of IT infrastructures remained a real problem when companies wanted more customised functionalities or to integrate the service obtained with others. IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) offered a way of masking this complexity and focusing on the core business. PAAS (Platform As A Service) aims for greater agility in development, with offerings that increasingly incorporate continuous integration and deployment tools. The cloud is a way of consuming IT services that brings companies back to the fundamental issues of creating IS value, by masking the complexity of the products and returning to the value of usage.
These issues, once overshadowed by day-to-day operational problems, are back in the spotlight, where they should always have been. Business agility is a concept that underpins the management of digital services between the statement of need and the delivery of an operational solution. Strategic agility is in question when we consider the choice of SaaS, of a customised service on public or private infrastructure, depending on the standard or non-standard nature of the services sought, and on the need to protect intangible assets (data). Cloud computing makes it possible to combine operational agility (by allocating the right resources) and functional agility. By being able to obtain standard services quickly and easily, organisations can reposition their resources to deliver customised services that really set them apart.
In the final analysis, while it is only a catalyst for a chain reaction towards greater continuity of effort between the design and delivery of digital services, and does not replace the prerequisites of corporate strategy and governance, cloud computing is undoubtedly THE catalyst that businesses need to achieve agility in their information systems and succeed in their digital transformation.
The 4 fundamental values of the Agile manifesto focus on :
1. People and their interactions rather than processes and tools
2. Operational software rather than exhaustive documentation
3. Working with customers rather than negotiating contracts
4. Adapting to change rather than following a plan
To find out more: the agile manifesto