Adapting to Industry Infinity

By Dr. Niladri Choudhuri, Padma Satyamurthy and Archana Joshi

The traditional industry is disrupted with the acceleration of digital transformation with support from growing technologies like AI. The Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry4.0 is all about advanced computer systems that can talk to other machines with enhanced computational, communication and control capabilities. We will see many more suc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Passionpreneur Publishing
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922456991

Book preview

Adapting to

Industry

Infinity

New WoW for IT Services

Dr. Niladri Choudhuri,

Padma Satyamurthy,

Archana Joshi

Adapting to Industry Infinity

Copyright © 2021 Dr. Niladri Choudhuri, Padma Satyamurthy, Archana Joshi

First published in 2021

Print: 978-1-922456-98-4

E-book: 978-1-922456-99-1

Hardback: 978-1-922456-97-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without written permission from the author.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The information in this book is based on the author’s experiences and opinions. The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher; the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense any form of medical, legal, financial, or technical advice either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is solely to provide information of a general nature to help you in your quest for personal development and growth. In the event you use any of the information in this book, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. If any form of expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Publishing information

Publishing, design, and production facilitated by Passionpreneur Publishing,

A division of Passionpreneur Organization Pty Ltd, ABN: 48640637529

www.PassionpreneurPublishing.com

Melbourne, VIC | Australia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Expert Positioning Story

Why the Metamorphosis

1 Internationalization to Globalization

2 Product as Outcome

3 Customized Mass Production / Reach

4 Open Network Platform

5 Value Partners

6 Security is Everyone’s Responsibility

7 Human Capital

8 Continuous Improvement, Experimentation and Learning

9 Leadership

10 Environmental Considerations to Innovation

Conclusion

Key Takeaways – Appendix A

Metrics – Appendix B

Testimonials

Bibliography

Profiles

DEDICATION

To my parents, who made me who I am, and to my wife, Sharmila and daughter, Manisha, who always motivate me to move forward. 

—Niladri

To Shyam and Sanju for their constant encouragement and love. 

—Padma

To Urvi, my little champ. 

—Archana

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing a book is harder than we thought and more rewarding than we could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without our family and friends. We thank them for being our pillars of strength and being patient when we encroached on their weekends and holiday times with talks of this book.

We would like to thank our colleagues and leaders in various companies that we worked for over the years, who have given us the experience in various aspects of IT to deliver value to customers. We would then like to thank the customers with whom we have been a service provider and learned a lot of lessons, many of which are mentioned in this book.

We would like to thank Sanjeev Sharma, author of DevOps Adoption Playbook, and Marc Hornbeek, author of Engineering DevOps – From Chaos to Continuous Improvement…and Beyond. We have learned a lot from them; they were a source of inspiration to write this book.

We would like to thank the innumerable students that we have taught over the years for everything we have learned from their experiences. During the discussions in class, we have gotten to know new challenges and solutions.

We would like to thank Sailaja Vadlamudi and Vandana Verma, who have shared their experience on security from both the business and system integrator points of view.

We would like to thank Shalini Nataraj for her constant encouragement during the book-writing journey and for providing business perspectives from her experience.

We would like to thank Hemant Gokhale for his feedback and views based on his industry experience as a transformation coach.

We would like to thank each other for the openness with which we combined our experiences together to make this book an enriched treasure for the readers.

We would like to thank our colleagues in our organization, who have helped us with getting the business running by themselves and allowed us the time to write this book.

We would like to thank Shilpa Srikanth for providing the visual designs for each chapter.

We would like to thank Moustafa Hamwi, the founder of The Passionpreneur, our publisher, and his whole publishing team and all those who worked behind the scenes to make this book a reality.

We would like to thank all the people who believed in us and gave their testimonials, endorsing the capability of the authors to bring value to the readers through our experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast. 

—PETER DRUCKER

"Digital is the main reason just over half of the

companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000." 

—PIERRE NANTERME

We are in a situation where there are lot of changes happening within organizations. New technology is emerging like cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the combined use of biochemistry and technology, etc. Customers also have new expectations. For example, earlier we used to hear music from a music system and CDs/vinyl. Today, we listen to music over the internet using streaming platforms like Spotify or Gaana.com, etc. So, it is no longer just listening to songs but an entertainment experience with curated tracks and playlists based on your mood or situation that can also be shared with friends to listen together virtually. Similarly, Uber is not merely providing a taxi service but creating a travel experience for its users. We now are using servitized products with customized mass production.

Today, information technology is not just a cost center, it is business. Alaska air says, We are a tech company with wings. Every organization has understood the importance of information technology and it is critical to survive in the current day. The pandemic has further emphasized the importance of information technology. There were many restaurants surrounding the campuses of a couple of large system integrators in Bangalore, India, near one of our author’s houses. Whenever we passed these locations, we would find them brimming with people until late at night. When the lockdown started and people stopped coming to the office, most restaurants shut down and only a couple remained open. The restaurants that remained open were the ones that had an online presence or collaborated with delivery applications like Swiggy and Zomato. They survived only because of information technology. This is true not only for small restaurants but for all big companies too.

Those of us who are in the information technology industry are accustomed to the concept of being a cost center, where the CIO is reporting to the finance head. Today, the CIO reports to the CEO and is as important as finance or HR. The traditional, familiar ways of working are no longer suitable. Our methods of operation require drastic changes under the current situation.

We have seen various frameworks like PMBOK, SAFe, scrum, and ITIL being used. Many people have spoken about and written books on the use of such frameworks and the valuable customer benefits. The customers engage system integrators to provide their services to run the information technology-related activities using these frameworks.

The challenges that these system integrators face does not get discussed enough, and they find themselves completely unaware of what they need to do. They work in an environment where the customer has multiple system integrators, where a couple are developing software, a few more are purely testing, and then a handful more assist in operations for the same project. Each one is bound by their own commercial contracts with the customer. There is no mention of an end-to-end value stream shared accountability.

Recently we saw that site reliability engineering (SRE) is picking up and everyone wants to do SRE. The system integrator who is providing only managed services does not have any clue how SRE is going to fit into their role, as they do not have end-to-end responsibility and the autonomy to make decisions. There are silos everywhere, however much the organization is following the various frameworks available.

This book tries to address the change required from the system integrators’ side. The change needed to be able to deliver the service and/or product or servitized product in a faster, stabler, and more secure manner to the customers while offering a great user experience throughout the journey.

This book tries to make the system integrators do the right thing and look from the point of view of value delivery using the existing frameworks more holistically. This book is not prescriptive, instead, it discusses how we can evaluate operations to satisfy the customer.

We have discussed the relevant changes that need to be implemented from a customer standpoint to facilitate system integrators in doing their work better.

This book is presented from the perspective of delivering the best outcome. We have addressed the various aspects that need to be considered and changed, wherever required. We start with the concept of globalization and how to study changes from the internationalization scenario today. It requires us to move to a product approach with autonomous teams and a shorter set of continuous work to establish a rhythm. We bring in the context of customized mass production as every customer is different and does not have the exact requirement. The objective is to satisfy each persona’s needs and avoid a one size fits all approach.

The organizations must collaborate extensively with system integrators and at times even competitors to be able to deliver globally. Security becomes more critical with the use of new technology. System integrators go with value network partners and work collaboratively in many new avenues of open-source software and even hardware.

Humans are the most important capital for any industry. They are very different from other types of assets. Giving the right respect and value is important. Looking after their personal needs is non-negotiable. We talk about human capital and its improvement; continuous experimentation and how learning plays a key role in coping with the changes. Learning always has elements of failure and providing a safe environment for failure is the most critical aspect.

The extensive use of technology has many negative side effects on the environment like emissions and large carbon footprints. We discuss the new ways of thinking while keeping in mind the mandatory requirement to make our environment and climate better.

All this requires the active support of leadership. There is change required—even for the leaders. They are also accustomed to doing their work for years in a particular manner. The leaders from the system integrator side also need to upskill and change to be able to lead in this new situation.

We have been in the information technology industry for a long time and have a collective experience of nearly 75 years. We have worked in the consulting industry, one of us in the system integrator department, and one of us from the customer point of view. Combined, this gives us a holistic understanding of the entire IT system. We have all worked with large global organizations and delivered value to global Fortune 500 companies. Our collective experience is what we share here.

Happy reading!

EXPERT POSITIONING STORY

Our story starts in India as this book is for the system integrators and India is the ‘land’ of system integrators. The journey started in 1974 when a large manufacturer of mainframes, Burroughs, asked their sales agent in India – Tata Consultancy Services to provide programmers for the installation of system software for an American client. Fast forward to the 201x decade. As per the Statista research department, the export revenue of the Indian information technology industry stood at 136 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year 2019. This revenue was estimated to grow by a further 147 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year 2020.

The authors of this book have been in this industry for decades and together they have more than 75 years of experience. The authors are currently working with various system integrators in the capacity of a customer, employed with a system integrator and providing consulting services to both customers and system integrators to improve their ways of working. This combined holistic knowledge and experience is not easily found in any other books.

The top struggles that the authors have experienced from a customer and supplier standpoint will be considered and referenced throughout the book. Let us now examine those struggles.

As you can see, there are two sides of the coin: customer and system integrators—each with their own challenges. Let us learn from the author’s experiences and identify the challenges that they faced.

Beginning with a system integrator, imagine a world where you have integrated machines and robots—then a person realizes that their machine needs some correction. They go to the internet, download whatever patch is required, and do it themselves. Or imagine a world where you wish to make a payment to somebody. You think of it in your mind. There’s a device that picks up those signals given in a certain format and the money gets transferred to that somebody. Imagine a world where you have the poorest of the poor in society, where they can access and get the money and facilities that they truly deserve without any middlemen coming into play.

These are very real-world scenarios that enterprises are trying to solve. We are seeing increasing examples of technology playing a leveling role to usher in a more inclusive world. Technology is a leveler, where it is used to connect us all. With all this focus on technology, it inherently highlights the companies and the enterprises that create this technology. While there are different elements to it, three broad categories are considered.

First are the businesses and enterprises that consume this technology to solve a need. For example, you may have