By Paras Shah, CEO LAMR Group and Romi Mahajan, President Pepper
No subject has animated the minds of technologists and business experts in the last decade more than “Digital Transformation.” The term refers to the set of principles, processes, and technologies required to move an organization from analog to digital. It is a packed term because it implies a variety of things, including the notion that business and technology are quickly converging into a singularity. Indeed, modern organizations are built on technology-based chassis as they build products, provide services, and engage with the world.
The business benefits of Digital Transformation are real. No large changes are uniformly beneficial- each set of decisions has its casualties- but for the most part organizations point to better engagement, higher productivity and output, and reduced business friction as core success points.
Of course, as with all things, the good comes with a set of challenges as well. Primary amongst these are security and governance.
The security challenge is familiar to most not so much because of a great depth of understanding but because the effects of failure are catastrophic and public. As with the iceberg –though- only ten percent is above the water. When a large payload breach occurs and becomes public, people begin to think of security as a binary idea- either you are secure or you are not. This conception fails to understand both the gradient involved (it is not black and white) and the fact that “normal” operations are possible because security enables them to be so- that’s the ninety percent under the water, outside of view. In 2023, we predict that the “security of enablement” will gain attention and that the discussion will not be restricted to security as a concept invoked only in the negative.
Governance, too, will be fodder for ample discussion and debate in 2023. As organizations globalize and enter new industries, multiple regulatory, security, privacy, and compliance regimes will obtain. Governance, therefore, must start with a clear commitment and must be nurtured by a dynamic framework that does not allow any processes or checks and balances to calcify. Real governance is active, a contact sport.
Underscoring both of these trending areas is the advent of cloud-native platforms and applications. These are the engines within the chassis. Extending the analogy to the point of potential irritation, just as cars and machines have to be maintained, so too do the constructs of IT. The process is continuous, not discrete and atomic.
Security and governance will play a large role in the business world in 2023. Every organization must take them seriously and have a plan. The plan, we know, will change over time. This is the nature of modern business.