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The world is experiencing an onslaught of economic uncertainty, and the IT industry is facing headwinds just like any other. Gartner recently lowered their expectations for IT budgets to increase by just 2.2% in 2023 on average – lower than the projected 6.5% global inflation rate.

But the economic turmoil doesn’t mean your competitors are going to stop investing in technology – CIOs still need to spend to improve operational excellence. The spending just needs to be more focused on modernizing legacy systems and streamlining tools for higher efficiency and lower redundancy where possible.

Here are tips for making the most of your IT budget in a recession.

Invest in revenue growth edge

If you have on-premises solutions, now is the time to upgrade. Modern edge solutions represent a generational shift, expanding the capabilities of the cloud while reducing the costs of stitching together piecemeal solutions and managing servers.

Let’s take a look back. The first wave of cloud provided flexibility and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). But these offerings were still the same primitives as your on-premise technology. Servers were replaced with cloud servers (like EC2) and network-attached storage with cloud storage (like S3). If you experienced a traffic spike, the cloud provided the flexibility to provision more infrastructure but the work to scale up (and down) was on your team to manage.

New edge solutions abstract this away. Developers can deploy applications, and it’s automatically hosted and delivered as appropriate without having to manage servers. Modern edge platforms are built to unify application tools to lower TCO, increase efficiency and reduce errors. This can double developer velocity.

Many businesses don’t realize updating their legacy technology stacks can be a hidden source of increased revenue. According to McKinsey, developer velocity is an often overlooked issue that can improve business revenue fivefold for all companies.

2. Beware of the tool tax

Nearly half of DevOps use between two and five tools, and 41% use between six and 10 tools. It’s costing companies $2.5 million per year – and, in fact, 69% of development and operation teams want to consolidate their tools due to hidden costs, insufficient agility, and the time maintenance takes away from managing security and compliance.

In other words, businesses are paying an invisible “tool sprawl tax,” which is adding to the TCO and cutting into businesses’ ROI.

While three disjointed tools may somehow be cobbled together – they don’t necessarily play nicely together. To lower your TCO, you need one that actually integrates and manages tools for you. This means investing in a holistic, unified platform rather than having to buy from multiple vendors.

3. Don’t skimp on security

New CVEs and zero-day attacks are being discovered at higher rates year after year. Threats are increasing faster than your headcount. Do not let up on security; others certainly aren’t. In fact, security improvements are the number one reason for tech budgets increasing in 2023.

Learn from others: 71% CIOs rate their internal organizations’ security as good or excellent. Yet 43% feel “somewhat” or “very” unprepared for the future. Why is that?

Invest and spend wisely by asking yourself these questions:

Does your vendor have the network scale to stop increasingly large attacks at the edge, to maintain the highest levels of reliability and performance?

Are you using automation and/or machine learning to help you adapt to constantly evolving threats?

Can you deploy virtual patches and update the WAAP ruleset across your network to mitigate Zero Days threats immediately?

Do you have flexible engagement models, including self-service with simple and predictable pricing?

If the answer to one or more of these is no, it’s time to re-evaluate your current solution and consider one that reduces friction points through automated operations at the edge.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the best starts are born during a recession. Ironically, the smartest investment to your out-of-control technology spending is more technology – but better suited for leaping past your competition and growing revenue. You don’t want to be too busy sawing the tree to take time to sharpen the saw.

Forward-thinking companies need to look for ways to address friction points through scaled, automated operations that only the edge can provide. Find an edge-enabled solution that integrates application security and performance into the development process for efficiency, compliance facilitation, and cost reduction.

Edgio operates a global edge network with vertically integrated edge solutions for web apps and APIs. Click here to learn more.

IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Low-code/no-code visual programming tools promise to radically simplify and speed up application development by allowing business users to create new applications using drag and drop interfaces, reducing the workload on hard-to-find professional developers. A September 2021 Gartner report predicted that by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020.

Many customers find the sweet spot in combining them with similar low code/no code tools for data integration and management to quickly automate standard tasks, and experiment with new services. Customers also report they help business users quickly test new services, tweak user interfaces and deliver new functionality. However, low code/no code is not a silver bullet for all application types and can require costly rewriting if a customer underestimates the degree to which applications must scale or be customized once they reach production. So there’s a lot in the plus column, but there are reasons to be cautious, too.

Here are some examples of how IT pros are using low code/no code tools to deliver benefits beyond just reducing the workload on professional developers.

Experimenting with user interfaces, delivering new services

Sendinblue, a provider of cloud-based marketing communication software, uses low code workflow automation, data integration and management tools to quickly experiment with features such as new pricing plans, says CTO Yvan Saule. Without low code, which allows him to test new features at 10 to 15% of the cost of traditional development, “we couldn’t afford all the experiments we’re doing,” he says. “If we had to write 15 different pricing systems, it could’ve taken years,” requiring backend fulfillment systems and credit checks for each specific price.

Financial technology and services company Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) uses the low code WaveMaker to develop the user interfaces for the customer-facing applications it builds for its bank customers, using APIs to connect those applications to the customer’s or FIS’ back-end systems. “It’s for speed to market,” says CTO Vikram Ramani. This approach is especially valuable given the shortage of skilled developers. While FIS is still evaluating the results, Ramani says they expect at least a 20 to 30% speed improvement.

Vikram Ramani, Fidelity National Information Services CTO

Fidelity National Information Services

And among low-code tools, for instance, FIS chose WaveMaker because its components seemed more scalable than its competitors, and its per-developer licensing model was less expensive than the per runtime model of other tools.

At Joist, a startup developing financial and sales management software for contractors, CEO Rohan Jawali is using the no code AppMachine platform to quickly build application prototypes, get customer feedback, and then build the actual application in order to skip a few iterations in the design process. At a previous employer, he could spin out a simple information and contact sharing mobile app for construction workers in a couple days compared to several weeks using conventional languages. Tapping the content management system within AppMachine made it easy for users to upload the required data into it, he says.

Process automation and data gathering

At bottled water producer Blue Triton Brands, Derek Lichtenwalner used Microsoft’s low code Microsoft Power Apps to build an information sharing and communications application for production workers. Before becoming an IS/IT business analyst in early 2022, Lichtenwalner had no formal computer training, but was able to build the app in about a month. It’s now in use at six facilities with about 1,200 users, with plans to expand it to 3,000 at the company’s 27 facilities.

Derek Lichtenwalner, IS/IT business analyst, Blue Triton Brands

Blue Triton Brands

Using non-IT users such as Lichtenwalner to develop apps that share information and automate processes is a good option for industries with small staffs of skilled developers, such as construction, where “there are many processes that need to be digitized and low code and no code can make that easier,” says Jawali.

Some vendors and customers are using low code/no code concepts to ease not only app development, but data sharing among apps. Sendinblue, for example, abstracts its application programming interfaces (APIs) into reusable widgets. By mapping its APIs with those used by its customers’ systems, says Saule, his developers “can drag-and-drop the integration functions, and build new capabilities atop that integration.”

Understand your needs

Low code/no code “can be an IT professional’s best friend for traditional, day-to-day challenges such as workflow approvals and data gathering,” says Carol Dann, VP information technology at the National Hockey League (NHL). But she warns against trying to use such a tool for a new application just because it’s enjoyable to use. And choosing the wrong solution can backfire quickly, she adds, with any quick wins erased by the need to code or work around the shortcomings.

“No code is a good fit when you have a simple application architecture and you want to quickly deploy and test an application,” adds Jawali. It’s best, he says, in “innovative experiments where you want a lot of control over the user experience, user interface—something you can’t get with a low code platform. Low code is more useful when you need to introduce more security and links to other applications, but at the cost of greater complexity and the need for more technical developers.”

The drag and drop simplicity of no code makes it difficult to achieve that final percent of differentiation that makes an application useful for a specific organization, and makes low code a better fit, says Mark Van de Wiel, field CTO at data integration software provider Fivetran. That extra customization might include, for example, the use of fuzzy logic to correct misspelled names in a customer database or the business logic needed to calculate a one to 10 score of the effectiveness of various marketing assets based on metrics such as views versus click-throughs.

Low code/no code apps can also be difficult to scale, says Saule. He recommends limiting their use to non-core strategic parts of the business, and when you want to experiment. “When an experiment succeeds and needs to scale is when it’s time to think about rewriting it,” he says, but in a more traditional yet scalable language.

Just because no code/low code lets more users create their own applications doesn’t mean they should, says Van de Wiel. At Fivetran, an analytics group prepares the marketing effectiveness dashboards used by the rest of the organization. “This allows our employees to focus on what they’re good at,” he says, rather than wasting time creating duplicate dashboards, or wasting money tying up IT infrastructure downloading the same data.

Organizations allowing extensive DIY app development must also ensure this larger pool of non-professional developers follows corporate and regulatory requirements to protect customer data, he says.

Know when to use low code vs no code tools

AppMachine was a good fit for the information-sharing apps Jawali developed because they must only serve hundreds of users rather than tens of thousands or more. It’s less suited to applications that require high levels of security, he says, because it can’t create the user profiles needed for role-based access. It also lacked support for the APIs required to connect to other applications such as product or issue management systems, or delivery tracking applications.

“Trouble can seep in when folks try to make tools do things they weren’t really meant to do rather than concluding it’s not the right fit,” says Dann. Developing a close relationship with the vendor’s customer success managers and understanding everything the tools have to offer—what the tool does well and what it was never intended to do—are critical to make well educated decisions. “Saying, ‘No, that’s really not what our platform does’ is a perfectly acceptable answer from a vendor,” she says.

Among other assessment questions, Dann recommends asking if a no code/low code vendor is willing to take part in an information security review, whether their solution has a robust API to integrate with other applications and whether it has an authentication and authorization strategy that fits with the customer’s security processes.

Don’t overlook “off the shelf” low code/no code solutions

If you think of low code/no code as a strategy to simplify development rather than a product category, you can find opportunities to speed app development with software you already own, or with off-the-shelf capabilities in familiar products such as cloud storage. This is especially true for routine, well-defined functions such as managing documents and workflows.

The NHL configured the integration capabilities of its Monday.com workflow management system as a low code/no code solution to replace a legacy system for channeling requests to its creative staff. It deployed this replacement system in about two weeks, compared to at least six months using traditional development methods, says Dann.

The league met another need—alerting its scouts to new information about promising players—by configuring the Box Relay no code workflow automation tool in the Box cloud-based data storage service to automatically assign tasks and move documents to the proper folders once they were processed. “This took the whole process out of email and streamlined workflow,” she says, “by using a ‘what you see is what you get’ interface rather than writing code.”       

Used properly, low code/no code tools can speed new apps to customers and employees while slashing costs and delays. They can also prevent security or policy breaches, or the need to rewrite an application that can’t scale if it’s successful. But like any tool, understanding what they can and can’t do—and what you need them to do—is essential.

Data Management, IT Leadership, No Code and Low Code

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

From highways to parking lots to tennis courts and more, asphalt is ubiquitous in modern life. It can also be highly dangerous under high temperatures such as those used in processing the petroleum-based substance. According to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), more than a dozen heated storage tanks for asphalt or No. 6 fuel oil have exploded in the past decade.

To improve the safety of its asphalt operations, US-based Owens Corning has put data analytics to work, leveraging low-code tools to develop a digital platform that incorporates multiple data flows and enables previously plant-specific information to be shared and coordinated across the company’s operations.

“This project was driven by a need to create real-time visibility to data with actionable insights to prevent hazards and enhance safety in operating asphalt processing tanks across our manufacturing network,” says Malavika Melkote, director of IT and the Analytics Center of Excellence (COE) at Owens Corning.

The project, which has earned Owens Corning a CIO 100 Award in IT Excellence, leverages digitizing sensors to extract data from asphalt tanks. This data is integrated with a range of other data points, providing easy-to-use visuals for plant operators to analyze, Melkote says. “They can quickly assess potential hazards and risks in real-time and proactively take preventive actions.”

The increased visibility into potential hazards enabled by the loss prevention platform, combined with preventive maintenance, has minimized unplanned production outages and created sizable cost savings via reduced equipment losses. Melkote says the time required to make a decision and take action at its plants has gone from days to minutes, thanks to the platform.

The MVP approach

Monitoring and managing an asphalt tank’s vapor space is critical to safety and compliance with Title V of the federal Clean Air Act. Prior to developing the loss prevention platform, Owens Corning and the rest of the asphalt industry collected vapor space data in offline databases. Those databases were plant-specific and the information they contained was difficult to share and coordinate across the company.

“Through our Loss Prevention discovery process, it became evident that the monitoring and managing of our asphalt tanks’ vapor space was a critical component to safety and regulatory compliance,” says Frank Burg, asphalt manufacturing support leader at Owens Corning. “While there was a rigorous process to manage safety and compliance, there was a big opportunity to make it more efficient and scalable across plants through automation and analytics. The opportunity was to fully digitize the data collected from tanks, automate integration of multiple data flows, and provide tools to plant personnel to analyze data, to highlight and assess risks and hazards for quick actions.”

In August 2021, Owens Corning set developing the loss prevention platform. A cross-functional team across Environment, Health, Safety (EHS), engineering, controllers, and plant leaders worked together with the IT analytics COE to lay out the vision and roadmap. To address the biggest pain points of the current process, the team identified three key requirements for the platform: It needed to provide timely access to data and proactive analytics that highlight risks; give operators the ability to share insights, actions, and learnings across plants; and be easy enough to be used by a diverse group of tank operators with varying degrees of technology experience. The team felt the best approach would be to leverage low-code tools.

“A key consideration was to enable the business team, with a citizen developer, to enhance, operate, and manage the solution long-term,” Melkote says. “Giving more control to business users to enhance the solution was a driver to choose a low-code technology platform.”

The resulting system is a single source of truth for loss prevention data, with proactive monitoring and analytics that alert plant leaders with real-time insights for hazard prevention. It uses a combination of advanced analytics and machine learning to perform relational data analysis beyond the raw data.

The development team, led by Muhammad Shoib, enterprise information architect at Owens Corning, took a minimum viable product (MVP) development approach, creating a proof-of-concept that was deployed at one plant within three weeks. That provided valuable feedback for fine-tuning the process and provided excitement among users and the business team. With their support, Shoib’s team scaled the solution and fully deployed it in 17 plants within three months.

“The MVP took two weeks to build and let users experience the solution to give feedback,” Shoib says. “We then moved to a pilot for one plant, which took eight weeks of iterative development. Deployment at the first plant took two weeks plus hyper care to fully operationalize the solution — to get end users, the product owner, and the citizen developer comfortable.”

Melkote says the pace of adoption and the minimal training required for end users was a pleasant surprise. “The iterative approach to developing an MVP, pilot, and the first plant implementation minimized any hiccups,” Melkote says.

Empowering business users

The approach undertaken for the project represents a significant shift for Owens Corning, which previously relied on a traditional approach to solution delivery, with the full scope solution delivered to the business for testing and validation. Melkote says getting the business tuned into an iterative method of co-developing the solution was a big change, but ultimately a worthwhile one.

“The MVP set the tone and the speed for what was possible that the users could touch and feel,” Melkote says. “They got onboard after the MVP to support the monthly release schedule of functionality.”

Since the platform has been deployed, Owens Corning has replaced personal tools and siloed information with a digital platform accessible across the enterprise, Melkote says. That, in turn, has enabled more efficient data flows and analytics that have increased the speed of decision-making such that the business can now solve more use cases with minimal IT involvement.

“Our business team now manages the solution,” Melkote says. “They felt empowered to enhance the solution at their pace. Dependence on IT to prioritize their enhancements is no longer an issue.”

Melkote now heartily recommends the MVP and low-code approach to her peers.

“Start small with an MVP, let your business partners experience the solution, see the value quickly,” Melkote says. “Put your business in the driver’s seat with the right roles; they manage the speed, functionality. Continue to nurture citizen developers, business product owners; be the best business partner. Let your business partners share stories and experiences and market the success stories.”

CIO 100, Digital Transformation, Manufacturing Industry