The race against time and competition was never so tight. Speed becomes one of the main priorities and competitive advantages for modern businesses. It’s all about how fast a company can innovate, launch new products and services, open new markets and react to ever-changing consumer demands.
In this race, IT departments are the ones that come under dual pressure. Whatever the goal dictated by business needs, there is always a second requirement of managing operational efficiencies and reducing risk.
Mike Randall, chief executive of Ricston, says: “C-suite and board-level teams recognise the need for their company to innovate, develop new skills to implement new systems, bringing innovative solutions to market to support business demands and drive shareholder value.” But, he says, they face major challenges of scarcity of resources, complex legacy systems and path dependency.
“Everyone is struggling with the ‘how?’ question, as this is where the rubber hits the road, the need to take existing staff, assets and processes, maintain legacy applications, while at the same time embracing the change and making the transition,” says Mr Randall.
“It’s the analogy of needing to change a car tyre while driving. That becomes a fine balancing act, but one which needs sponsorship and engagement at all levels to be successful; it’s not just IT that needs to embrace the change.” The core to the change is the digital transformation journey which assumes both a technological and organisational shift.
API FYING YOUR BUSINESS
When it comes to technology, what you are looking for is a composable integration architecture with underlying connectivity and orchestration services as easily discoverable and reusable digital capabilities, in essence application programming interfaces or APIs.
The API-led connectivity approach not only enables legacy modernisation, but also promotes an organisation in which the growth of ever-increasing technical debt is prevented in preference for lean and mean iterations that encompass short feedback cycles, thus accelerating the pace of innovation.
“It is important to understand that it’s not just about building a couple of APIs. To harness the full power of digital capabilities, you have to plug them into a discoverable network,” says Ricston’s senior solutions architect Kevin Jervis. “It is an application network of APIs, operating across a hybrid landscape of IT – public and private cloud, and on-premise – which accelerates the speed of change.”
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
The APIs life cycle doesn’t end when you “go live”; APIs are designed, built, tested, published, consumed and reused. Discoverable APIs become companies’ tangible assets that enable decentralisation, eliminate repetitive work and open greater degrees of agility. These assets can create their own economy with established key performance indicators and policies to define and measure their usefulness. They can also lead to monetisation or further innovation, or enhancement based on demand driven from their own success.
Few platforms support a comprehensive “cradle-to-grave” API life cycle experience, which enables an underlying vision of a fully connected, digitally composable enterprise. One that does, MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™, creates scale and increases agility through promotion of reuse and federation of self-service capabilities.
It is an application network of APIs, operating across a hybrid landscape of IT, which accelerates the speed of change
Whereas technology can offer solutions and tools, the true transformation happens with the change in the ways of thinking and organisational shift. It encompasses supporting necessary people and process transformation beyond merely adopting a new technology platform.
SOMETHING NEW
At Ricston, we understand the challenges of change and through close engagement with customers across many verticals successfully guide organisations through their journey. As part of the enablement process, Ricston aims to establish and accelerate the company’s own centre for enablement of C4E, the model that considers both the production of APIs and enablement of the organisation to consume and maintain them. The successful implementation of this model helps accelerate adoption and richness of the available assets, further increasing the speed of adoption and ensuring that business reaches its goals.
Are you ready for a digital transformation?
