Technologies are available today that let enterprise teams design or redesign business applications within any system environment no matter how much “legacy” infrastructure there is underneath.
Just about every company wants “digital transformation,” which generally means having smart software that can carry out and automate a variety of business tasks, whether customer experience management, sales, logistics, anti-fraud and compliance, or resource management.
It’s relatively easy for startups to innovate in digital, of course, as they have “greenfield” processes and systems, and can quickly start out with all-cloud-based services in place to launch their ventures. It’s not so easy, however, for an established enterprise coping with legacy software and hardware.
For established enterprises, the move to cloud isn’t so automatic. There are existing systems and applications that may represent years’ worth of painstaking development and process development that continues to deliver competitive advantage and business value. These infrastructures support business processes that are thoroughly embedded within the enterprise, and are often so intertwined with the technology they are frequently painful to revise or remove.
It’s analogous to “a CIO who is faced with competing against new disruptive startups, overpowering kids fresh out of college drinking loads of Mountain Dew,” says Phil Simpson, JBoss product marketing manager atRed Hat.
Technologies are available today, however, that let enterprise teams to design or redesign business applications within any system environment no matter how much “legacy” infrastructure there is underneath. These tools and platforms, which fall under the umbrella of business process management software, can help legacy companies compete with any digital disruptors who emerge on their playing field.
“The imperative for digital transformation applies to established companies that are finding themselves disrupted by all these new startups that have a more agile and are more able to change as their customers and markets change. Digital transformation is for established organizations that need to change in order to compete in new markets,” Simpson said.
At the core of digital transformation are processes that evolve and change as rapidly as the business changes – meeting customer preferences, releasing new products, pivoting to new markets, and forging new partnerships. The tools and platforms that enable this transformation include an emerging generation of business process management (BPM) and business rules management systems (BRMS) solutions, offering a way to rapidly build modern applications with a minimum drain on precious and expensive IT resources.
