Happy new year 2023!
Have you made any new year resolution? (you must!)
Research says that we plan for future more than we ponder over the past. New year resolutions are important, they give hope, they show promise!
But, reflection the past-year is equally important, it gives perspective, it shows us where are we standing!
Masks off
After more than two years of pandemic, as life is returning to normalcy, year 2022 has been very pivotal in bringing out what Digital transformations are at the core…
Last year (2022) – I have worked with 4 customers…
Through my cultivation of the customers, discussions with them & responding to their queries, my top 3 learning from 2nd half of the year 2022:
#1 – Every enterprise has started behaving like a tech company
There has been this famous saying “Every company is a tech company!” A prophetic saying from so many CEOs in the tech industry.
Which means what you deliver to your customer is your business but how well you do it is taken care of by your tech.
But because of pandemic, unusual competitions & shake down of leadership teams in most top enterprises (there has been a new CEO – joined in last 2 years – in all four companies above)…
There is more (and real) appreciation that the company is a “tech” company, every “capability” the organization’s have need to be “product”-ized and delivered iteratively in “agile” manner with “automation”in all aspects of “operation”.
These will deliver business outcome, customer outcome, operations outcome. And hopefully analyst outcome & employee outcome.
Leave alone the hierarchy of the leader in the oragnization – all talk about productization of capabilities. Especially in Insurance & Banking.
In 2022, I have heard customers talking about operations as much as transformation, resilience is now becoming a regulatory concern. Customers SLAs are becoming higher.
If you (have been)/are participating in Digital Architect Hackathon Season #3, you would know what I am talking of…
#2 – Enterprises are bonding with Legacy – the old friend
For last 15 years, we have been hearing of sunsetting mainframe in banking. They are money drainers, slow movers, white elephants!!
Still 60-70% of banks use mainframe and that wouldn’t vanish in thin air in next 3-5 years.
Post-pandemic, customers are re-thinking about rejuvenating the mainframes so that life span of the mainframe increases!
Customers are looking out for modernizing mainframes (pig with lipstick), reducing cycle time of mainframes (some are adopting monthly releases of mainframe), capture mainframe data changes & stream them to digital operation.
Can we – the architects – take advantage of it – make mainframe more agile? What about mainframe devOps, Reliability engineering for mainframe? etc…
Enterprises are not going to break up with the mainframes any time soon, they are trying to explore new dating opportunities 🙂
#3 – The elephant in the room – Is recession looming large?
This is not customer feedback, but a number of people have messaged me in the recent times – is there a recession? Hence adding my view here…
Is there a recession round the corner? My answer is “yes” and “no”.
Yes – because what ground realities we see, affirm that.
Tech layoffs… Started by Twitter, fast-followed by Facebook and then by Edtechs (Byju, Unacademy), aggregators (Oyo, Zomato, Blinkit), few Fintech & healthtech companies.
Recently Amazon, Salesforce too declared downsizing of the workforce.
Even though everyone says it’s temporary, we read that recessive forces have kicked in the tech industry.
No – depending on how you decide to act upon. Definitely No – if you play this game by the aspirations of the customers.
All industries across the world are fighting inflation, and recessionary pressure & are looking for more ways to create new revenue stream, improve efficiency.
The best place to be is to be able to visualize & articulate how you see your customer building a new “capability” that can be “product”-ized with the new tech.
Learning Metaverse? ChatGPT? You should!
(FYI – read this: Princeton student says his new app helps teachers find ChatGPT cheats)
In another episode, I will write how can you align your Architecture & Tech skills to customer aspirations and make it recession-proof.
People asked me what “MM Ep 01” is? MM – acronym for Monday Muse of Architect Ep 01 – Episode 1, each episode gives 1-3 actionable insights that you can apply immediately.
I have realised that years 2020-2022 has masked lot of things & 2022 has started unveiling things that were behind the mask.
Year 2023 will show the world our faces!
Till next Week!
Take care!