There Is No Future of Tech Without Modern Software Delivery

The Fortune 500 companies of old keep disappearing. In the last 19 years, 52 percent of them have either gone bankrupt or merged with another company. Analysts predict that starting next year, Fortune 500 companies will be less than 15 years old on average.

Businesses must transform to survive. They need feedback and insights from customers to determine how to serve them best. They have to understand the changing marketplace and see where they fit in. And, they must be able to adjust rapidly.

It’s for this reason that more organizations are rethinking business transformation and turning toward emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), for the answer. But first, they must implement modern software delivery to enable these.

Embracing the Future of Tech

You can’t turn around without seeing another article about the future of technology. Self-driving cars, robots, drones and other forms of emerging tech appear in almost every tech article or news spot. And while consumers get excited about this new tech, it is equally beneficial to businesses.

AI can help companies improve the customer experience, increase sales and even provide predictive analysis. Across industries, from automotive and healthcare to finance and logistics, companies can, and have, used AI to understand consumer behavior better and create automated solutions.

Similarly, IoT devices can gather data so your organization can better predict and resolve issues customers and employees frequently run into. For example, Zebra Technologies, which provides logistics and transportation solutions, uses it to lower the number of trailers on the road. It uses cameras to determine whether a container can take on a more significant load.

Over 70 percent of executives say the IoT has increased their companies’ revenue. This increase is because IoT uses data to create greater efficiencies, build new product lines and understand consumers better.

In short, emerging technologies use data and a lot of it. But if your company can’t process this data and iterate solutions quickly as a result of the insights it provides, then what good is it?

Where Modern Software Delivery Steps In

Information technology keeps evolving but not fast enough. Businesses that want to stay competitive and deliver new capabilities must transform by using foundational modern software delivery techniques.

Without modern software delivery, your IT team will never be able to spin up features fast enough to compete.

According to Joseph Ours, “A modern software delivery strategy is a synergistic combination of present-day software development models, cloud technologies, and collaborative working methods to create new capabilities while keeping pace with the changing IT market.”

Here are four ways using modern software delivery will allow the future of tech to thrive in your business:

1. It helps process big data.

As already noted, emerging technologies require much data. That data not only needs processing, but it also has to be stored somewhere.

The cloud permits companies to store data as needed actively. And, Agile and DevOps can deploy new products and capabilities based on data almost as soon as they arrive.

Google Labs frequently asks customers to play around with new features to see how they respond. When customers don’t seem interested — e.g., by not providing additional value such as ad clicks or cross-product referrals — then those features never reach the general public. Google can only do this by actively processing data and using modern software delivery to create new features and capabilities.

2. It creates a better customer experience.

The more data you can access, the stronger your personalization. And the stronger the customization, the better your customer experiences will be. According to one survey, 63 percent of consumers want personalized recommendations.

We know companies like Zappos and Southwest for their customer experiences. They’re responsive on social media, send out notifications and continually seek feedback from their customers. But, they would never be able to create such an experience today — as large as they are — without modern software delivery.

Modern software delivery allows these organizations to implement chatbots, review order data and analytics, evaluate and respond to customer reviews, and equip end-user applications.

3. It speeds up delivery.

When you combine modern software delivery techniques, such as the cloud, modular architecture and serverless computing, your company can quickly experiment with and implement new technologies.

Modern software delivery organizations release 46 times faster than those without it. For example, 3M Parking Systems used the cloud to create a tracking solution within two days. Now, it has insights into its thousands of new technology installations.

3M Parking Solutions needed to develop a new capability, and it needed to do so fast. It wouldn’t have the ability, without modern software delivery in place, to connect devices, track and store data, and test the new system.

4. It makes companies more secure.

With data collection comes its own set of worries, however. IBM’s research found that the average cost of a data breach is almost $4 million globally. And every individual lost document costs another $150, equating to losses in the millions, or more.

It’s easy to look at modern software delivery — with its access to data and its need for storage — and assume it’s not safe. But it’s quite the opposite. Modern software delivery enables security to become a critical part of development practices, especially within Agile and DevOps.

It also lowers human contact using automation and encourages companies to respond to detection and remediation rapidly. Lastly, the cloud often has more robust security settings than most default data centers.

Finally

Technology — and the businesses its integrally part of — will continue to evolve. But to take advantage of the future of tech, companies need the right foundation made up of modern software delivery.

To learn more about it and how to rethink your business’s transformation to modern software delivery, read Joseph Ours’s guide, “Thrive Through Disruption With Modern Software Delivery.”

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