UNLOCKING
BUSINESS POTENTIAL

THROUGH SOFTWARE INNOVATION

1

03 THE MARKETLANDSCAPE
09 SOFTWARE
MODERNISATIONFOR EFFICIENCY
13 UNLOCKINGINNOVATION
19 YOU ANDTECHNOLOGYINNOVATION
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THE MARKETLANDSCAPE

In the thought-provoking Wall Street Journal in2011, engineer and investor Marc Andreessenboldly stated that; ‘Software is eating the world,’Whilst Andreessen was referring to the global
businesses entering a new phase of massdigitisation, he highlighted that non-technology
organisations were now being heavily dependent
on software to run their businesses. Nine years
later and to no surprise, Software companies
are the fastest growing businesses and accountfor 71% of 2020 Tech Fast 500 - fastest growing
companies in North America followed by thepharmaceutical businesses, according to
Deloitte.
3Uncertainty could be the new normal;
therefore, creating repeatableprocesses to continually revaluatebusiness strategies and innovation
portfolios, at rapid pace, could
support your organisation, not only
in a time of crisis and disruption,
but also in the readiness for any
disruption or change.

To do so effectively, it is important to close the gap between existing IT
assets and the organisation’s strategic growth objectives. As gathering
reliable data is becoming more challenging, and budgets continuously
tightening, early groundwork and discovery activities can help alleviate
many sticking points during the procurement and negotiation stage.
This can be achieved by engaging with the key IT, Procurement andLine of Business (LOB) stakeholders to gather the overall operational,
legal and commercial requirements and map those against all relevantgroups and objectives.
What was on top of the agenda yesterday, may not be there tomorrow:the global pandemic has stressed the importance of adaptability andinnovation at pace. In addition, it welcomed Independent Software
Vendor (ISV) engagement through cloud investment introducing moreroutes to market such as Amazon Marketplace. This has facilitatedan environment for accelerated transformations and provided new
platforms to innovate from.

Gartner, “Don’t Survive, Thrive! Leverage Crises and Scarcities to
Accelerate Business Innovation”, Nicholas Evans, et al,
Published 18 May 2020.

As the world deals with the economic recession triggered by the global
pandemic, businesses of all sizes find themselves in havoc. Buzz
phrases like ‘the new normal’, ‘the end of commuting,’ and ‘the demiseof retail,’ made global headlines in the news, and for many executives it
is now the realisation that the market landscape has been changing foryears, and now with COVID-19 this has without a doubt accelerated theshift, with the recipe for survival being a thorough transformation of
their entire business model. This has rocketed the demand for software
products and services, consequently propelling the fastest growing
enterprises toward deeper investment and innovation within this field.
As we move into 2021 and beyond, more organisations are facing
increased pressure to deliver efficiencies and cost savings due to theongoing scrutiny of budgets at all levels. This is due to evolving market
trends, rapid increase of demand for products and services, and theemergence of novel competitive threats. Finding innovative solutions todeliver value back to the business whilst gaining the competitive edge
requires effective use of existing IT assets, optimised procurement
processes, and investment in innovation to support growth.

The challenges
are very real.
More vendors, moreproducts, less money toinvest, struggling to find the skills
to manage it, and need to remain
relevant and competitive. Not
having suitable answers to thesequestions will severely inhibit manyorganisations in their plans for digitaltransformation.
Pete Groushko
Director of Technology Sourcing Sales

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UNICORN BUSINESSWith more eyes than ever before on an organisation’s application
estate, use of software, and IT assets in general, there is an evergrowing pressure on IT departments to innovate at speed in orderto remain a serious contender in the marketplace. All too often we
see examples of those companies that fail to move forward allowing
competition to move in swiftly. There is no time to stand still, especiallywith the rise of the ‘unicorn businesses’ disrupting industries.
Typically, these ‘unicorn businesses’ are privately-owned start-ups
valued at over £1 billion. The technology democratisation has come along way since 2013 when ‘Unicorns’ were first mentioned, for they are
now represented by over 500 unicorn businesses around the world.
Thanks to the unparalleled speed of technological advancement
and mass business digitalisation, start-ups are now able to reachunicorn status in less time than ever before, posing a real challenge
to traditional businesses. All you need to disrupt a well-establishedmarket is a sound innovative idea and a credit card to access flexible
development environments that can bring it to life. This, no doubt,
makes large enterprises uncomfortable. It is a common practice not
only for the investment firms to keep an eye on the emerging business’s
trends. These traditional enterprises need to hold on to their market
share whilst exploring avenues of expansion, often via acquisitions.
At Computacenter, we partner with an array of diverse customers
representing various verticals and see the unicorn companies enteringa broad range of industries: Monzo and N26 threaten traditionalbanking, Zoopla and Purple Bricks disrupt property marketing, BrewDog,
and Deliveroo challenge the food and drink industry, OvoEnergy –Energy market, the list goes on. All these businesses have one thingin common, they’re using scalable technology to their advantage andimplementing it within the centre of their business model.

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In these market conditions, innovation is imperative to the businesssurvival. We all heard the tales of corporations that failed to innovate
and ceased to exist; However, being innovative once is not enough, andthe unicorn companies are not safe either.
As the battle for survival continues, and the competition gets tougher,tech giants like Amazon and Apple are entering new sectors andchallenging digital pioneers like Netflix with their own streaming
services. Being disruptive is no longer enough to stay afloat, but
keeping up with continuous innovation, harvesting of data, investing
into analytics, creative content and customer experience is vital toremain competitive.
Whilst technology innovation creates competition and rivalry acrossall the industries, it also provides opportunities for collaboration andco-creation of business value. The stand-out sectors include financial
services, and the heroes of 2020 - healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
The latter operate within demanding regulatory and complianceenvironment; however, financial services face these too and pioneer
innovative approaches by using agile methodologies to balance thelegal and commercial demands to gain a competitive edge.

DIGITAL BANKING
As with other industries over recent years, the financial services sector
has experienced a rapid shift towards online operating models withFinTechs disrupting the traditional banking sector.
The central value for FinTechs like N26 and Revolut is automated moneyand data analytics, that applications use to anticipate their consumers’
financial needs, notifying them when it’s time to restructure amortgage, consider more saving for retirement or when clients areoverspending on their utility bills.

How did it suddenly become possible when the long product researchtimeline is also mirrored by a typically stretched software development
lifecycle in response to the strict regulatory demands?

The world isgoing even moredigital due to theglobal pandemic:
distributed
microservices and data driven
operating models are prevailing.
These trends shift conversations
from challenging ‘buts’ to promising‘what ifs’ whilst ensuring agility andbusiness continuity.
Olya Scekaturova
Head of Sales, Workplace Services

Whilst initially, FinTech lured customers away from traditional highstreet banks, financial sustainability and investment requirements
created an opportunity for partnership combining the benefits ofboth worlds. This allowed more FinTechs to work in collaboration withtraditional banks in helping to diversify their portfolio of products andfurther monetise their rapidly expanding client base. This collaboration
has been spurred by the onset of open banking. We are still at the dawnof the open banking revolution which invites the use of open APIs andenable third-party developers to build applications and services forfinancial institutions, their customers, and connected parties.
This financial services evolution comes down to two things; driving
down the cost of customer acquisition for banks, but more importantly,
meeting the requirements of the consumer with products andsolutions to the problems they face. Strategic partnerships allow bothparties to achieve greater scale and improve customer reach.

PHARMACEUTICAL
In today’s fast-paced world, the critical factor of any successful
business is speed — the faster you can deliver the product tomarket, the better. In 2020, with COVID-19 affecting our lives, thiswas particularly evident in the pharmaceutical sector where theaccelerated development of a vaccine was reduced from a 5-10-year
research cycle to just under one.

As highlighted this year, organisations like Pfizer, BioNTech andAstraZeneca are becoming more technology driven. Adoption ofcloud allowed researchers to remove complexities from clinical
trials, enhance computational power, and improve developmentof proprietary software. Whilst focusing on their core business ofdrug development, pharma companies often partner with smaller
innovators that provide huge libraries of clinical data for AI platforms toanalyse leading to faster experimentation and astonishing results.
To top it up, B2C consumer healthcare demand via mobile apps are
calling for expedited development cycles and innovation to address
the growing demand for online medical appointment bookings, virtual
appointments, online prescription requests, national track and trace
apps and more.

PUBLIC SECTOR
Much like the private sector, the public sector is experiencing a shift in
the digitalisation of public services, where the needs and expectationsof citizens and businesses are at the centre of each initiative.
2020 has been a challenging year for the government agencies
too, both with the lockdowns and quarantine, citizens have beenheavily relying on online services and apps for healthcare, tax, social
services, immigration and more. This has ultimately made government
agencies focus even more on emerging technologies to help makepublic services more efficient, secure, simple and cost-effective. Many
have started experimenting with AI enabled technologies, automateddecision-making systems (ADMS) and distributed ledger technologies(DLT) in hope to connect to their citizens and build trust in government
processes.

The role of the new agency should
also focus on its strategic value as anenabler and platform for creativity,and providing digital and datadriven innovation, multi-stakeholder
collaboration and value co-creation
with public sector. The Agency canbe pivotal to ‘start building a beta
version’ of a smarter and agile
government.
OECD, Digital Government Review of Sweden
Towards a Data-driven Public Sector

6Government web- and app-based portals (e.g. business/citizens user-driven services, open
data as a platform for public service delivery and data-driven innovation)

ICT commisioning (agile procurement of technology and services, PPPs)

Key enablers and coherence: Shared services and common components (e.f. eID, mailboxes),
standards/guidelines (e.g. CKAN open data platform), intra-government collaboration platforms.

Data and Information infrastructure for the public sector (e.g. data governance, basic dataregistries)

Interactive, open and smart public sector

GOVERNMENT AS PLATFORM

On-line and physical habitats (e.g. Labs) for multi-stakeholder collaboration, skill building,problem-solving, experimentation, crowdsource collective knowledge)

Digitalgovernment

Streamlined andefficient public sector

Guide and enable the adoption of emerging technologies such as AI, big data, blockchain tobuild a smart government

e-Gov

Source: OECD, Digital Government Review of Sweden 2018

Various governments use a combination of technologies to create
safer societies, allocate resources and treatment for patients in a
public health system, profile taxpayers, address the unemployed, anddisburse welfare benefits or detect fraud. Some governments, like the
Swedish, turn their digital agenda into a multi-year Digital Government
strategy (Digital Agenda First) and work on robust programmes in
conjunction with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment. This multi-faceted approach helps build trust withcitizens in order to better understand their needs and trajectories.
The Swedish government discovered early on that the success of theintegration of digital services depends not only on citizens’ trust, but
their computer literacy and technology adoption, which is now factored
in to ensure a robust communication plan and education.

Our pioneers transform innovations
into applications, develop them tothe series production stage, and thus
safeguard the pioneering role played
by Daimler products. Because they
set standards and keep this goal inmind from the initial idea through to
its implementation.

Daimler, Product Innovation
Source: https://www.daimler.com/innovation/product-innovation/

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MANUFACTURING
The manufacturing industry has always been a tough sport forcompetition. Industry 4.0 with all its innovation and digitalisation
has brought new challenges as well as opened a whole range of newopportunities and potential.
Industrial machines giant, Caterpillar, partnered with the predictive
analytics firm, Uptake, to build a digital platform that analyses
massive amounts of data gathered by their machines’ sensors
ultimately leading to new data driven services for their customers.
This combination of Caterpillar’s product engineering with Uptake’s
software developers and data analytics expertise transformed thedata from the sensors into useful information which was then fed backto Caterpillar customers for real-time decisions and maintenanceplanning. This innovative approach also allowed the manufacturer tocreate an additional revenue stream by monetising the data generated
by the original product. challenges as well as opened a whole range of
new opportunities and potential.
You need not look hard to see other reputable royalty in the industrial
world take advantage of software development and digitalisation.
Daimler experiments with the blockchain technology and implements
it for myriad of purposes including quick, cheap and secure datatransfer without any central intermediary.

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Daimler is invested in the microservices model and partners withmultiple hyper-scalers to extract the most value. Daimler AG uses
Microsoft Azure DevTest Labs which help reduce the developers’
onboarding time from weeks to hours. At the same time, Daimler Trucks
NA uses DevOps model and IBM® UrbanCode® Deploy software to
manage application delivery, deployment and quality and control.
Whilst some businesses are thriving and finding new opportunities tocollaborate, others are fighting for their place under the sun; however,
all organisations have to deal with the rising skills gaps, employee
attrition and cyber security threats – all this is when new commercial
models, AI and digital technologies raise the competitive bar higher.
This whitepaper explores Computacenter’s latest thought leadershipon technology trends within software and the application domain. It
also explores the key areas to focus on in order to unlock your businesspotential through software innovation:• Software Modernisation for Efficiency - The business value ofexperimenting and failing fast
• Unlocking Innovation - Building adaptable and agile procurement
processes• The seven principals that lead to successful software innovation

SOFTWARE

MODERNISATIONFOR EFFICIENCYTECHNOLOGY TO PROVIDE BUSINESS VALUE
Can you name a business that does not have a website, an app or any
other form of digital presence? Probably not. Going digital is an effective
business strategy and form of interaction that extends customer
reach and helps build brands: online visibility translates to businessvisibility and subsequently increases market share. But if everyone isonline, then what is the differentiation? Is content king? Is customer
experience the key? Is it all about the speed and convenience? Yes to all
the above, but what is the driving force behind it? How do businesses
combine the infrastructure, software, tools, application development
and more for an ultimate consumer experience whilst providing data
security and helping deliver business growth?
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APPLICATION MIGRATIONASSESSMENTAPPLICATION MIGRATIONDISCOVERYAPPLICATION MIGRATIONAPPLICATION MIGRATIONBusiness and operational
assessment of an application
portfolio to decide target fate

Detailed automated technicaldiscovery and dependency
mapping

Migration planning and execution‘command center’

Migration execution aligned to thetarget fate and cloud strategy

PLANNING

DELIVERY

Underpinned by the Computacenter Cloud Adoption Framework

There are many ways to generate business value through newtechnologies. It provokes many questions such as: how do you simplify
the ordering process for your clients? How can you make it easier foryour customers to get access to the services you provide? Leveraging
technology to create business value is the tricky bit. The terminology‘idea to production’ is something commonly used to ‘speed up’ time
to market, often with the use of agile methodologies to facilitate
experimentation as we have seen in pharmaceutical sector.
The ability to be agile is a combination of many things, some of these
are technical and some are cultural arising from legacy technology.
Gaining confidence in processes and being comfortable with moving
fast can only arise once you have demonstrated a level of resilience tofailure that is not in the psychology of many large organisations.
The focus on business benefits often brings applications estate into theconversation. Of course, efficiency and cost reductions are priority in
end-user applications, but let’s first think about the infrastructure andenvironment required to support a successful application strategy.

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The reason that you
do anything in IT
is to add businessvalue. Applications
exist to manipulate
data and getting access to data in
different ways is how we add value tothe business.

Elke Papaioannou
Customer Unit Director
Consultant Principal

We believe that the cloud delivery
model, will transform and growbeyond enterprise software ($456
billion) and technology ($3.7 trillion).
The cloud has already moved beyond
the enterprise software market
and will continue to as we turntowards the cloud for transportation,
healthcare, education, and more.

Source: Bessemer Venture Partners. State of the Cloud 2020 Report

The evolution of cloud provided access to applications anytime andanywhere; amongst many advantages of the cloud model is: flexibility,
predictable costs, security, scalability, lower energy costs and morethan 99% guaranteed uptime. With these benefits in mind, cloudservices from the big three cloud vendors: Microsoft Azure, Amazon
Web Services and Google Cloud are gaining share and monetising
software. With the expectation of customisation, flexibility and business
continuity, more and more businesses are choosing a multi-cloud or a
hybrid approach. Whilst operationally it makes sense, the managementof a multi-vendor approach can become complex quick.

MULTI-CLOUD STRATEGIESARE NOW THE NORM
It’s no surprise that cloud adoption among enterprises
has been growing rapidly, especially as everyone
moves to increase both their agility and efficiency.
Most enterprises are now using a mix of private clouds,
public clouds and on-premises infrastructure.

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Adding to this procurement of the third-party products and services
by the line of businesses is a perfect recipe for creating a shadow
IT, jeopardising security and causing mayhem. So, in pursuit offeasible and flexible business and IT solutions, the modernisation andtransformation journeys become infinite.
Quite often, the ‘move to cloud’ can be viewed as a direct catalyst forthe change that organisations are looking to generate. This is largely
because cloud providers offer many of the fundamental components
and elements that are required to quickly enable the rapid developmentof new applications. But the key to a successful and long-lasting
cloud migration is the transformation of an organisation’s application
portfolio which includes application modernisation.
Application Modernisation involves analysing, migrating, modernisingand redeveloping applications to facilitate cloud migration andother digitalisation strategies. The application landscape is typicallycharacterised by the way it has grown over a long period of time; legacy
applications and their migration are typically described as being
complex, difficult to oversee and evaluate.
Companies are often faced with the challenge of reviewing theirapplications and adapting them to the current state of technology.
To do this, it is a good idea for organisations to gain an overview
of the landscape, analyse it and decide whether the applications
can be migrated 1:1 into the cloud, whether extensive adjustments
are necessary, or whether the applications must be completely
redeveloped.

ON PREMISES

IaaS

PaaS

SaaS

Infrastructure as a Service

Platform as a Service

Software as a Service

Applications
Data
RuntimeMiddleware
O/S
Virtualisation
Servers
Storage
Networking
You manage
Other manages

EVOLUTION OF CLOUD SERVICES
Public cloud brings the greatest benefit when you are able to leveragea wider portfolio of services for example: containers, functions as aservice (often called serverless), data services, messaging, AI, the list
is extensive. The common element is that if you want to do this, youneed to think about splitting your existing ‘monolithic’ applications
and start thinking about microservices. This is just a fancy term forbreaking your application up into lots of little pieces so that eachindividual element can be developed, changed, scaled, monitored, andexecuted separately from everything else. When you do things thisway, the potential ‘blast radius’ of any issue effecting the whole of yourapplication is dramatically reduced.

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As the cloud services market matures, the customers’ expectations
around the ease of use and doing business continue to rise. There
are typically three models to compare: Software as a Services (SaaS),
Platform as a Services (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
With this comes the variety of choices of how to approach people,
processes and technology to achieve a lean operating model yet toremain agile and compliant.
Whichever is the right choice of technology for your organisation –successful digital business is a combination of factors. However, yourstrategy to take advantage of new technology should focus on whatmatters the most – your customers, and to do so, a strong data-driven
operating model is a must.

UNLOCKINGINNOVATION

Most organisations are heavily reliant on technology
and software to drive their businesses. We’refrequently seeing that applications are now part ofthe ’engine room’, that is enabling the business tofunction efficiently. These utility applications that‘keep the lights on’ generally don’t differentiate one
organisation from its competitors. They may bevital system of record applications, integral to theorganisation doing business but they are just part ofthe cost of doing business – the table stakes.

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Customer loyalty is an increasingly rare commodity. The expectation of
the buyer to be able to easily interact with the seller through a digitalplatform is almost universal. It works in our personal transactions,
so it begs the question; does it work in our business transactions?
Customers increasingly expect the applications to be available
across multiple platforms and provide the customer with a rich user
experience that simplifies the interaction and contributes towards
building customer brand loyalty.
A digital application that differentiates one organisation from its
competitors, by its very nature needs to be bespoke. These applications
may rely on Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) applications at the backend but having a flexible platform that you control and unlocks theability to innovate at the front.
Creating digital services is mostly undertaken within the lines ofbusiness where the niche expertise can be found, rather than using
a centralised pool of developers. This decentralisation lends itself tothe product management approach where a team is responsible forthe full lifecycle of the application. Removing these barriers between
development, testing, operations, and the line of business subject
matter experts enables a strength and cohesion that the traditional
approaches cannot achieve. Coupling the product approach withagile development practices and the rich suite of tools that eliminate
manual activities and handoffs allows organisations to react quicker tocustomer demands.
Within the product team, experimentation and the willingness to try
things and throw them away if they don’t work is key. Failure is part ofinnovation. It should be expected and embraced if it’s contained withina small blast radius and we can take something new away from theexperience.
Public cloud provides a great platform for innovation, as it allows forfast iterations and the ability to fail or succeed - quickly . The wealthof native services available, often richly featured and usable with
only a minimal amount of coding experience, make developing rapid
prototypes quick, straight-forward, and cost effective.

Application leaders are overwhelmedby the sheer number of applications
to inventory and assess at thestart of a rationalization process.
Prioritizing application areas basedon business-fitness, change, known
problems and costs splits the work
into manageable pieces.

Gartner, “How to Prioritize Application Inventory and Rationalization”,
Bill Swanton, Published 24 October 201814

You don’t add innovation to anorganisation, you get out of its way.

Adrian Cockcroft
VP Cloud Architecture Strategy at AWS

WHAT IS CLOUD-NATIVE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT?
When you hear ‘Cloud Native’ what do you think? Perhaps you think it’sanother industry buzzword used to market more ‘stuff’? Fortunately, it’s
far different and in this chapter, we’ll explore what it means to you andto your business and how it helps unlock innovation.
Within a short time, cloud-native has become a driving trend in thesoftware industry. It’s a new way to think about building large, complex
applications. It’s an approach that takes full advantage of modern
software development practices, and the unparalleled power andflexibility of the public cloud infrastructure.
The speed and agility that comes from developing a cloud-native
application is underpinned by the idea that time-to-value is thefundamental metric for innovation. There is no economy of scale insoftware. Therefore, enhancing the application development to releaselots of small changes regularly is the optimum approach. If you change
one small thing at time, then it’s easier to detect problems and resolve
them, it will take less time and risk to integrate the changes, it’seasier to measure time-to-value – which ultimately leads to happierdevelopers and satisfied customers.

THE 7 PRINCIPLES
THAT LEAD TO
SUCCESSFULSOFTWAREINNOVATIONThe concept behind Cloud-Native application
development are deeply engrained into seven key
principles that we will explore further and how
they can lead to successful software innovation fororganisations:

Stop trying to centralise everything:
Provide autonomy and accountability
throughout the organisation.

Smarter With Gartner, “Why Now Is the Time to Accelerate Digital”,
Chris Howard, Published,10 September 2020

More importantly the Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing model for the public
cloud cleverly allows developers the freedom to experiment and try
out their ideas without the fear of running up huge costs. By taking
full advantage of (PAYG) developers are in confident that there are no
wasted resource and they are reducing the overall risk of the cost of
failure and enabling successful software innovation.

3. EMBRACE MODERN DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS AND TOOLSThere is no denying it - modern cloud-native applications can becomecomplex business. Therefore, it is a good idea to be clear from the starton each step in the journey - from virtualisation to deployment (andeverything in between). As well as the added pressure to ensure that
nothing interferes with the overall performance, it is useful to plan forevery eventuality in the development of these applications, especially
software-as-a-service applications.

1. ADOPT A MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE
A Microservice architecture is the orchestration of an application asa cluster of services as well as enabling the rapid and dependable
delivery of sustainable and intricate applications. By adopting a
Microservice architecture approach it will help enable successful
software innovation. Unlike traditional approaches to architectures,the Microservices of today are absolving the need for developers to use
monolithic systems, but instead it allows them to free up their time todevelop purpose-built database solutions that amplify the application
performance and reduce an organisation’s overheads.

As customers look for increased
innovation, responsiveness andnew options, providers strive toaccommodate them.

2. TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE CLOUD
Cloud-Native applications are intended to grow in a dynamic cloudenvironment, these applications make extensive use of serverless
infrastructure to reduce organisations’ overheads.
15

Source: The Impact of Public Cloud on Operating Budgets.
March 2020

going to fall between the development and operations department, soorganisations can move quickly to evolve their application landscape tomeet the needs of the business and customers.

Sustainable application delivery
requires application platforms
and architectures that are notjust snapshots of current trends.
Architectures should continuously
adapt and evolve to meet new andevolving business requirements

Gartner, “2021 Planning Guide for Application Platforms, Architecture
and Integration”, Brad Dayley, Gary Olliffe, Published 9 October 2020.
An example of this is the famous 12-factor application methodologythat details a set of ‘best practices’ that developers can observe when
they are building applications that need to be fully optimised formodern cloud environments.
Whilst the 12-Factor Application methodology doesn’t eradicate thecomplexity that developers are faced with, it does however give a clear
overview of the structure for organising development environments. It
is a good idea that if a company is to adopt these principles, they are
fully aware of the structured steps for the developers to manage theirproject from start to finish. This is an essential step for companies tofollow - not only for developing software applications in a coherent
and cost-effective way, but also paving the way for true innovationin the application when completed to time and in an organised andstructured way.
Allow developers and operations to tackle those large monolithic
applications that you have tried so hard to avoid for all those years. You
can be as agile as you want in new applications but if you can’t makethe most important applications in your business more adaptive, thenat some point, your agility will be limited.

4. INSIST ON DEVOPS
DevOps needs no introduction in the methodology of how it effectively
and seamlessly brings together the developers and the operations
teams together, to deliver applications and services at speed. Manyorganisations strive to have a DevOps strategy, because quite simply
it aims to accelerate the software application quality, as well as
promoting agility. Noting this, it is important to appreciate what DevOps
is and what it is not – and how it can help your organisation become
more innovative in its approach when this methodology is adopted.
What DevOps offers an organisation is the ability to cut throughthe complexity that exists across different departments within an
organisation – typically between developers and the operations side ofbusiness. It is crucial for any business to resolve any conflict via DevOps
as it will in turn ensure that the project is moving forward at pace andwith agility. It breathes an air of confidence that something crucial isn’t
16This is a compelling but demanding organisational requirement tochange but, it is crucial to those organisations that will succeed.
Historically, organisations are grouped in lines of technology but as
cloud providers start to do a lot of the ‘heavy lifting’ this continues todrive down the significance of detailed infrastructure and becomesmuch more about how you take full advantage of the platform that you
are using.
An organisation that can leverage this cultural and systemic change
will likely be the most successful in the future . That’s not to say thatcompany will need to be developing all of their own applications, but
through removing any organisational restrictions, you can encourage
harmonious working environments between the two departments andaccelerate the deployment of ‘off-the-shelf’ applications as well as
in-house developed apps.

5. AUTOMATE THE DELIVERY OF SOFTWARE WITH CI/CD
Everything will be code! Or at least, everything will be expressed incode, even infrastructure. The cloud and platform providers are doinga lot to make this simpler, but nothing can get away from the factthat configuration will continue to be bespoke for every organisation
based on their individual needs, governance in specific geographicallocations, and their organisational preferences.
Continuous Integration and Deployment is a strategic concept thatmany development teams have adopted for a while now. The desire to
be able to confidently add to and deploy your application code in realtime is nothing new. But, as more ideas become ‘code’, the significanceof this cannot be underestimated.

Agile software engineers, developers
and testers become trusted business
partners by driving business
innovation and growth. Application
technical professionals mustembrace continuous learning, adopt
DevOps practices and adapt to new
ways of working to improve businessand customer outcomes
Gartner, “2021 Planning Guide for Agile Software Development and
DevOps”, Kevin Matheny, et al, Published 9 October 2020

The core principles of continuous integration and deployment appears
to be quite straightforward - you take the process you have for building,checking, testing and releasing code and automate it. It sounds
easy, but a lot is dependent on how much of that has already been
automated.
A key component to success in this area is to have consistency. While
your developers are writing, it is advisable that they can control thestorage, management, and handling of their code. You can thenprovide a way for frequent tasks to be automated with quick proactive
visibility for any challenges that might arise. You would then be advised
to address these swiftly, so the entire process is transparent andseamless.

6. APPLICATION SECURITY AND DEVSECOPS
Probably one of the most fundamental necessities when developing
any application for businesses and end users is security andcompliance. This is critical for any application’s success and simply
cannot be ignored by developers or the businesses who are creating
applications.
Whilst organisations may well be under increased pressure to develop
and deliver applications that are innovative. The applications will neverbe trusted if there is a breach to any customer data that has resulted
from not having any of the necessary security in place for end-users.
Mobile banking apps are an example of this in the financial sector– yes,they need to be at the forefront of innovation, functionality and design,
but without the essential security protection, they will simply not be
used by customers. The competition is high, and if you get it wrong –you might as well pack up and go home.
Creating applications that ignore customer protection and any country
regulatory requirements are a thing of the past -and have no room inthe current market. Customers will be quick to publicly report of any
breach and you can expect a negative media frenzy. Once the damage
is done, customers are quick to move to a competitor that can offer the
security that is required, irrespective if the issue is ever rectified. This
will be a PR nightmare for those companies that have got this wrong
and have ignored the importance of ensuring that their applications
are secure. Companies must do more to take advantage of the benefitsof DevSecOps – which not only offers security within the applications,but also stability at pace through automation.

DevSecOps is not only relevant
to organisations creating theirown applications, but also
important to organisationsacquiring software. Organizations
use a varying combination of
acquisition, outsourcing andcustom development. Production
implementation also often requires
creation of connecting software orcustom code to make applications
function as expected or required.
Security and risk management
technical professionals responsiblefor development, security and/or
operations of applications must
adapt practices to support modern
DevSecOps trends.

Gartner, “Structuring Application Security Tools and Practices for
DevOps and DevSecOps”, Frank Catucci, Michael Isbitski, Published 18
June 2020

IT
Operations

DevOpsApplication
Delivery17

IT
Operations

Development

Development

DevSecOps

Security

Application
DeliveryDevSecOps
As IT infrastructure has shifted to dynamic provisioning and sharedresourcing, DevSecOps adoption is continuing to increase acrossenterprises. The objective of DevSecOps is to build security assurances
into development cycles and custom-line business applications. To
improve software security and reliability, organisations are actively
monitoring and analysing their end-to-end processes and tools acrossthe development lifecycle with data analytics solutions.
Integration of security into DevOps to deliver DevSecOps is a difficult
process for two different disciplines. It requires a new mindset andapproach for processes to adhere to the agile and collaborative natureof DevOps. The approach requires transparency in the development
cycle to make security as seamless as possible. Integrating DevSecOps
strategy also means that at each stage everyone is responsible todevelop a quality product that is resilient to security challenges.

Successfully introducing automation
into your organisation will require
more than just selecting tools for
scripting languages. Working withyour organisation’s leaders, youwill need to develop a conscious
automation strategy that strikes abalance between over-automation
and under-automation

7. PEOPLE & CULTURE – CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUOFinally, and perhaps most important in any of these principles is thatyou must foster the ‘Enabling Success’ culture within your organisations
to help teams stay innovative and customer centric. By doing this,you enable your workforce to collaborate on what matters the most– business result: whether it is procurement team that understands
the development cycles and enables the purchase of additional
storage capacity or new technology in an agile way, or Operations andDevelopment educated on the best procurement timings to leverage
vendor programmes that bring true value to the business.
This will make your competition vigilant, and ultimately lead to a better
customer experience and by fostering this culture of innovation allows
you to take advantage of CI/CD, DevOps, DevSecOps and other types ofservices.

Agile innovation methods have
revolutionised information
technology. Over the past 25 to 30
years they have greatly increased
the success rates in softwaredevelopment, improved quality andspeed to market, and boosted the
motivation and productively of IT
teams.

Harvard Business Review: Embracing Agile
May 2016
18

Gartner, “Guidance Framework for Choosing What to Automate to
Increase Application Delivery Agility”, Bill Holz, Paul Delory, Published 4June 2020.

A good example of this is Amazon’s famous ‘Working Backwards’
philosophy. Working backwards is a framework for how to think abouta product without lengthy roadmaps that end up being scrapped. It’s away to short-cut the traditional product development track and makesure that you build something that your customers actually want.
Educating your Workforce
Education! Education! Education! - For an organisation to be truly
innovative and successful it starts with fostering a culture where youcan educate your people and let them try. Failure should be expected –maybe not encouraged, but the fear of failure shouldn’t be a stumbling
block. By doing this you are harvesting a culture where people are
not scared to draw outside of the lines, and to be innovative in theirapproach. It is these types of people who excel in these environments
and bring true innovation and agility to a company – and ultimately totheir customers.
Cascading Change from the Top
Everybody needs to understand that pace is not without its challenges
and being able to work together and tackle these challenges is of theupmost importance. It is a common misconception that you are goingto need a ‘whole new workforce’ to be successful.
The people you already have are your best people – they know yourbusiness inside and out, but they need your help to learn these new
ways of working. It really is the most important thing you can do.
To nurture your teams – to allow them the creativity to excel andencourage a culture where innovation, agility and challenging thestatus quo is the norm, not the exception.

YOU

AND TECHNOLOGYINNOVATION

19

Navigating the right way to unlock business potential through softwareinnovation is no easy task and there is plenty to consider, as we’vedemonstrated throughout this white paper. The journey is full ofopportunities and challenges which have helped to drive innovation
across countless sectors. The role that technology plays for businesses
in this process is two-fold. On one hand, it has shown us what is
capable when either we as businesses, or our competition, embrace
a new platform or technology and prove the benefits in the field. On
the other hand, making the right decision on which direction to take atthese crossroads can be one of the biggest roadblocks, often marredwith issues surrounding implementation, potential cost, or netting thewrong results.
Understanding the landscape is not about seeing your situation asa moment in time, it is about looking at how these technologies
are evolving, and how they in turn, can be aligned to your businessobjectives.
Sound advice you can trust is paramount in taking this next step
forward in unlocking your business potential. At Computacenter,
we endeavour to remain at the forefront of proven and emerging
technologies, continually matching the right solutions to the rightbusiness applications.

20

Agile software engineers, developers
and testers become trusted business
partners by driving business
innovation and growth. Application
technical professionals mustembrace continuous learning, adopt
DevOps practices and adapt to new
ways of working to improve businessand customer outcomes.

Gartner: 2021 Planning Guide for Agile Software Development and
DevOps, October 2020

PREPARING FORTECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONTOGETHERAt Computacenter , we work with enterprises
across all sectors to bring technologicalprogress into business strategy; Our longstanding relationship and industry expertisespan across Public Sector, Financial Services,
Logistics, Telecommunications, Retail, Media,
and Manufacturing.
We invest heavily in the end-user disciplines,
technology procurement, infrastructure, security,
application development, amongst others. We
hold powerful partnerships with the top vendors
and software publishers to build technology
roadmaps and the processes to underpin theirsuccessful deployment.
Co-creating value and innovation with ourcustomers to enable success is at the heart ofeverything we do.
21

CONTRIBUTORSANDRIANNA THEMISTOCLIGROUP PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER – CLOUD & DATA CENTER
Andrianna is responsible for the go-to-market and strategic marketingdevelopment for our cloud and data center portfolio. Andrianna is anexperienced Marketing Manager with a background of over 15 years
working in ICT marketing across various roles.

ELKE PAPAIOANNOU
SOLUTION MANAGER ACCELERATE DIGITAL BUSINESSElke has worked in sales, pre-sales, consultancy and IT-strategy roles
for more than 20 years. As an experienced Solution Manager, Elke is
responsible for managing the Software Productivity Services Portfolio in
Germany for new and existing developments.

MARTIN CLARKSONSOLUTION LEADER – HYBRID IT AND PLATFORMS
Martin has worked for Computacenter for nearly 25 years, almost all of
this as a key architect in our professional services team. Over the past
couple of years, Martin has been focussed on building our propositions
and assisting customers as they look to adopt the public cloud andensuring that they deliver value to what they need from a partner likeComputacenter. He has a vast amount of experience in how enterprisescale organisations deliver change successfully and it helps that heunderstands some of the technology too.

OLYA SCEKATUROVA
HEAD OF SALES, WORKPLACE & EUC SERVICESOlya heads up the solution specialist team within the Workplace Line ofBusiness. She has led commercial and professional technology services
practices across EMEA before joining Computacenter in her current
sales leadership role. Olya is an experienced Change Management
practitioner with both technical and business management
background.

PETE GROUSHKOTECHNOLOGY SOURCING AND SOFTWARE SALES DIRECTOR
Pete has been at Computacenter for 22 years and has held a variety
of differing roles starting with the CIP’s accredited procurement
division. Now as the Director of Technology Sourcing, an entire teamhas been industrialised to foster Pete’s approach to enable simplicity
for customers around their experience in supply chain. Whilst ensuring
the supply of technology is treated as a service and differentiating ourapproach in clear and succinct way to our customers.   

ROB SELBYGROUP AWS TECHNICAL LEAD
Rob has more than 20 years IT industry experience. With a backgroundcovering a variety of roles from software development to infrastructureand solution architecture. Rob joined Computacenter 3 years ago
and has been responsible for the Cloud and Data Center service
development strategy. Rob is now focused on leading our AWS public
cloud service development.

22Computacenter is a leading independent technology partner, trusted
by large corporate and Public Sector organisations. We help ourcustomers to Source, Transform and Manage their IT infrastructure
to deliver digital transformation, enabling people and their business.
Computacenter is a public company quoted on the London FTSE 250(CCC.L) and employs over 17,000 people worldwide.

Computacenter plc
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