Enterprise software was stuck in a time warp of old-style coding, but the new way of IT is forcing things to change
By Sanjay Gupta
Is it possible that the world of business is changing so swiftly but that of back-end programming for running operations or handling customer interactions remains a stick-in-the-mud?
Until recently, enterprise software such as ERP and CRM did seem stuck in a time warp of old-style coding with hardly any consideration for agility and beauty.
But then came a raft of phenomena that began changing the usually stodgy world of biz apps. Leading this charge was cloud computing, followed by mobility, consumerization of IT and big data. And of course, social (you just can’t escape social!)
It was as if the ground beneath the coders’ feet—and also under the feet of their bosses, the CIOs and IT managers—moved with a vibration that sent them scurrying and worrying.
And as they were struggling to keep up with the new, huge demands of end users for anytime, anywhere, any-device access to data and applications, several cloud service providers and startups emerged and offered nifty, better-looking ways to do stuff such as payroll and customer loyalty management.
The established vendors, the multi-hundred pound gorillas of enterprise computing, took a while to adjust to the new way of IT. But, from what I could gather in my past few interactions with industry leaders, they are not only making “adjustments” but completely changing how they used to look at applications. Even the die-hard conservatives are discovering that if they do not change their old ways of serving enterprises, they will become extinct sooner rather than later (it is already “later”).
This presents a dilemma to many Indian enterprises. They have sizable IT teams that are used to running IT the old way, content with working on ugly-looking interfaces and slow turnaround times for new plug-ins, modules, etc. Another issue is that it is very difficult for them to tidy things up without causing any disruption to business which, in several cases, is expanding rapidly.
At the same time, most realize that they must retool or replace their critical business applications with a suitable mix of cloud and in-house apps—if they are to achieve the business agility their top management so vehemently craves.
So they are struggling with their existing applications as well as infrastructure and are in various stages of migrating to agile, smoother computing. There is a lot of re-skilling and redeployment of staff they have to do, in addition to re-architecting processes as well as infrastructure.
The biz apps space is indeed going to be interesting to watch.
– Sanjay Gupta
Editor, Express Computer
