Companies are being disrupted by smaller, more agile companies that are able to leverage software and better react to the needs of their customers. Some recent examples include Amazon, Uber, Netflix, and AirBnB.
To survive, your company must put software at the center of its business strategy. At the core of this software strategy are open source technologies. However, open source has a few downsides that your strategy should take into consideration. Open source projects like to take the happy path. In other words, an ideal world where everything works and you can function in a self-contained bubble. Unfortunately, as we know all too well, stuff happens in the real world for which we need to be prepared.
Additionally, this journey is difficult as culture and processes become an obstacle to the transformation. It's important to look at the current skills and have an open dialogue about the digital journey. As with any transformation, you do not just arrive at the final state. It takes lots of planning, training, measurement of successes, and learning from failures. There are specific aspects that your business will need to consider as you prepare for this digital transformation journey.
Preparing for the Journey
Whether you have already started on this journey or are just beginning, there are several aspects that you need to consider for ensuring success.
These 5 areas are just the initial critical aspects for preparing for the journey and they are related to your organization. In addition, you should consider what the role of a community such as open source or partners can play in your transformation.
Understanding the Role of Open Source
When considering this transformation, your organization needs to understand the role of open source technologies and the communities around open source. Open source is at the center of this digital transformation and has been an accelerant in the efforts of many large organizations. One reason for this is around the technology innovation and speed of adoption that a community of developers can deliver in open source. The second reason is around the power of community support and contribution quality. The quality of the code and the rigorous review of the code ensures reliability and production readiness. The last reason I'll mention is the transparency and openness of the community. The roadmap is open, Pull Requests can be submitted, and acceptance and issues are visible. These reasons have led to the emergence of open source being central to your company's business strategy. Learn more about how you can leverage open source in my blog post Open Source at Center of Digital Transformation.
Blueprint for Digital Transformation
At Cisco, we are working alongside you in this journey. We are co-developing a blueprint to assist you in the transformation. There has never been a better time to transform together.
The journey to cloud native begins by first understanding the changes required to make the transition to infrastructure as code that enables your developers to move with greater agility and speed. Define the new business services and automate the business processes to accelerate the software development life cycle. Deploy these new business services and continuously integrate and deploy enhancements and new services. Partner closely with the business and gather user stories and issues regularly. Lastly, determine which open source projects are of interest to your business services and which ones you can utilize to differentiate your business through contributing to the project.
Stop by our booth (#11) at KubeCon to learn how Cisco can help accelerate the journey to cloud native, and make container deployments on Kubernetes production-grade. We also have speaking sessions and activities going on away from our booth, including:
We look forward to seeing you in Seattle!