Tag: Digital Transformation

A Tale of Two Cities

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Cloud and On premise reminds me of A Tale of Two Cities. One is being replaced gradually without the other having knowledge of it. It is not surprising some teams will remain in self denial of the proliferation of Cloud.

Similarities and Revolution

Cloud is nothing new and have been around for decades like hosted servers or managed services. The revolution comes about in the form of Digital Transformation from need for larger and larger server capacity in a particular entity and virtualisation. Suddenly, everyone jumps to the bandwagon as costs plummets with competition. However, not all teams are challenged to change.

How this Ends?

If you are familiar with the ending of the story, Darnay is knocked unconscious while being replaced by Carton for the guillotine. Does this sounds familiar if you are belonging to the teams who are not on Cloud? In many organisations, this replacement are taking place without involvement of on premise team. In most case, decisions are done at top management level and the teams are only engaged during migration. What a stark reminder to being at the guillotine!

A Tale of Two Cities are playing out at many organisations. However, it is a good suggestion that this should not be the plot. The ending is not pleasant for many. It is time we revisit the playbook and mirror another tale!

No Downtime Approach

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Application downtime is getting lesser and lesser with Cloud computing. Users are more demanding without the need of downtime. Thus, we need to move to the approach of hotfix and high availability environment.

Picture by Ethan
Shift to Zero Downtime

The design of zero downtime will require a digital transformation approach to your entire architecture. Another consideration is utilisation of the Cloud platform for different high availability approach. As this approach will incur additional cost like licences, you may want to evaluate a switch to pay as your use model instead of fixed licensing.

Development with No Downtime

Another key change is your development approach. This must be changed to reflect deployment with no downtime. Instead, hotfix and patches must be applied seamlessly without any downtime or impact to user operations. Therefore, your development will need Agile and DevOps to enable this approach.

If you have intention to move to a services with no downtime, it is time to reform your architecture and development approach. This involves utilisation of Cloud platform and Agile development to achieve this vision.

Cloud and Digital Transformation

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Digital Transformation usually move at different stages for each application team in an organisation. This is because legacy system and old process remain entrenched for users. Cloud is a major proponent for digitalisation. What should be the practical approach to use Cloud for your Digital Transformation efforts?

Transform to Hybrid Cloud

Major applications are now offered as SaaS (Software as a service) or cloud application. Thus, your upgrade likely will be conducted in Cloud platform. Due to the timing differences in upgrades, you will encounter the hybrid Cloud approach. This is where your applications is located in both Cloud and on-premise. All digital transformation efforts will definitively result in Hybrid Cloud in your enterprise applications.

Cloud Transition Application

As your building blocks of applications transition from on-premise to Cloud, you will find a need for transitional application These type of software helps as a temporary bridge between on-premises and Cloud applications. Such software could be API gateway, integration platform or even customised applications. This application are not designed for long term. The key focus is to bridge until your application digital transform to Cloud.

Cloud and Digital Transformation will take at least 5 years. You will need to prepare for Hybrid Cloud and create your Cloud transition applications. In summary, it will not be a Big Bang approach to move to Cloud overnight.

Digital Transform your Legacy System

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

In the era of Digital Transformation, you will be shopping for new systems or SaaS (Software as a Service). Often, vendors may demo existing product or propose turnkey project can cater to all your needs. Today, I had learnt that a review to replace an existing application with a new application would be shelved. This is because a new system will take 2-4 years to customise or configure.

Cloud Transformation

Moving to Cloud is not a bed of roses if your legacy is heavily customised with no standard SOP across your global offices. You may consider to split your migration into two major steps rather than a Big Bang to Cloud. The first major step is to set a baseline for your Cloud. This usually involves standardisation or even conforming your SOP to the new Cloud platform. The second step is to determine your pilot site to be moved. This increase your Cloud knowledge and helps you understand the pros and cons in Cloud.

Application Consolidation

In a large organisation, it is not surprise to find overlapping applications and products. It is more worthwhile and cost effective to consolidate your applications. These applications may be spread out in different regions and you should always review existing applications before embarking on external review. You will also have the advantages of knowledge and data with your existing application.

Digital transforming your legacy system does not always translate to high cost of buying a new product. You can always opt for SaaS Cloud approach or review existing application to be consolidated. This way, you gain traction and speed to digital transform without wasting time, cost and efforts.

Websites Outside of China

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Having an oversea sites can run into all sorts of networking issues if you are accessing these websites in China. This is because of the well known firewall of China. You will need alternative solution if you have users in China that use websites outside of China. If no, you will be running into countless uncontrollable risks.

Time to Locate a Mirror in China

Unlike other countries, it is favorable to have a mirror sites in China. You can consider this option if you have a large user base in China. Although there are conditions to setup a website, the returns will outweigh the risks of blocks from China firewall. The mirror site can also serve as your redundancy or CDN (Content Delivery Network) for high availability and added performance.

Other Alternatives

If you do not meet the conditions for a mirror site in China, there are other options for you to consider. You can transmit your data real time via your VPN instead of the regular internet. Using VPN have its advantages with faster latency. However, there are also risks because they will be subjected to firewall blocks and it will also cost more. You may also consider store and forward method where you accumulate your data for transmission. Although you may not have real time data, you can manage your user expectations and controlled your data transmission at a lower cost and systematic manner.

Having users in China is a tricky approach for your website. If you have a large user base in China, it is worthwhile to invest a mirror site within China. Otherwise, you may consider lowering user expectations and opt for non real-time or less availability solutions.

Handling Outages 2021 and Beyond

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

We had an outages yesterday that was totally unexpected. It was so big that the major news reported them i.e. Akamai outages. It was surprising because we would have thought this type of outages were a relic of the past. How should outages being handled in a world where users cannot tolerate 5 min of downtime?

Formation of Outage Team

Do you have an outage team? It is likely majority of organisations do not have an outage team. Neither are outage drills conducted in large scale for the organisation. You can relate this like a fire drill where you will have a fire drill team for your entire buildings. This team is usually cross functional and well drilled in various skillsets from infrastructure, security and applications. Although this team could be costly, it is worthwhile to note that outages may cost a 100 times more.

Outage Management

Outage management is different from disaster recovery. Disaster recovery usually deals mostly with internal applications or related downtime. These SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) could be formal processes with your external parties. When outage happens in the old ways, it usually starts with a Sev1 (Severity 1) and manage with standard incident management process. It will take an hour or more before this is deem an outage. The slower pace and passive nature of incident management may not suit today’s outage.

Outages are no longer isolated in nature due to Cloud and networked environment. Case study like Akamai outage will lead organisations to consider a need for outage team who are highly trained and focused to manage outages swiftly.

Standardised or Customised

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Standardisation is taking shape in place of cusomisation as organisation move to reduce exponentially cost in technologies. The mindset to customise is outdated and not cost effective. Digital Transformation is driving these standard approach in the form of Agile Templates.

Resistance is Futile

The efforts to standardise will be met with a lot of user resistance. This is a normal human behaviour that must be taken into consideration for all standardisation project. There will be a lot of comparison between customised featues and the standard ones. Often, lots of behavioral efforts will be expected to resist and lament against standard features. Ultimately, benefits outweighs customisation in terms of cost and maintainability. Users must be educated or be realised that resistance is futile.

Tips to Standardise

There are a few tips to smoothen your standardisation project easier. Many of the tips will involve mindset and behavioural acceptance.

  • Find a strong sponsor and champion to drive the user acceptance.
  • Remove or deny users as key stakeholders if they are too negative or unsupportive for standardisation project.
  • Assign a SME (subject matter expert) with deep knowledge of change management and business process re-engineering.

Standardisation projects are not technically challenging but more on change management and business process changes to accommodate customised features. Strong user resistance must be broken down or removed as a key critical success factor for such projects. Good champions can help drive the success and gain management confidence in your standardisation approach.

Do Not Digital Transform

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Digital transformation may be the trend now with many rushing to transform their digital technologies or implement new innovations. There are many success stories reported but many have comes with trial and error. The key is to identify what not to digital transform and avoid unnecessary wastage of time, money and efforts.

Inclusion Criterion

The evaluation for digital transformation is vague in many instances due to various results and differences of business domains. What works for banking industry may not be applicable for logistics domain. Thus, you need to have clear inclusion criterion to be setup for your digital transformation program. This will allows you to pinpoint the necessary system or tools to be transform.

Exclusion Criterion

The inclusion criterion is the first step to understand what are the key things that you can digital transform. It is highly recommended to run multiple pilots to understand the nature of the tools you going to use. With deeper knowledge through realistic applications, you can form the exclusion criterion on what cannot be digital transform. For instance, voice recognition may not work in heavily accent Asian countries with different dialects.

Digital transformation could be for the good, better or worst. You need to have a clear picture and understanding of the tools that you are using. Always seek to run pilot study to know the tools well before you embark on a major digital transformation program. In this way, Agile approach is for the best.

A Strange View of RPA

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

System is a minefield for various human interventions. A fully automated process runs on a set of controlled variables and environment. What will be the check and balance for these automation? This is also the key critical view towards RPA (Robotics Process Automation).

Minding your RPA

RPA is truly a strange view because it is attempting to speed up data entry of poor User Interface (UI) with automated key strokes. The system of today have so many relational tables that users are expected to link and click every dropdown values or foreign keys. The end results is a horrific experience for users. “Some wise people” will introduce RPA to reduce the key strokes for these data entries. Are these really the right approach?

Balancing the RPA

In most cases, I will not recommend introducing RPA to resolve UI deficiency or bad UI. By doing so, you end up playing a cat and mouse game with the application. This is why there is a balancing act to using RPA. You may end up investing your RPA too much instead of focusing to resolve the underlying process or application constraints.

RPA is not a new tool and existed since the time of web scraping. It gain popularity with digital transformation with the complexity of linked data and UI. This strange view towards RPA means you need to be mindful and balance your RPA wisely.

Cloud Dollars and Sense

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Budgeting is an key aspect for many traditional IT projects. You often need to ballpark the budget estimation from previous experiences. The tricky part comes when you are doing Digital Transformation project for Cloud. How do you make dollars and sense out of something that have not been done before?

Metering

If you are moving to Cloud, it makes sense to starting metering your transactions. Think of it like your electrical bills, where your are being charged at kilowatts per hours. Metering makes it easier to convert to Cloud credits when you are planning your budgeting. The good part with Cloud is that you can adjust or stretch your credits with different Cloud features.

Running Cost

Running cost for Cloud will deviate quite a bit from your existing on premise application. This is because Cloud have factor running cost into its metrics as compared to your on premise cost. If you want to compare the running cost of on premise application, you will need to include support cost, upgrades, manpower or downtime.

Preparation for Cloud move will have to start as soon as possible. If you are still pondering over the move and trying to make sense of the dollars. You can consider to meter your existing on premise applications and sum up your running costs. This will help greatly in your comparison to Cloud costing.