Originally, many IT teams were often structured to support employees – not to operate revenue-generating services. For them, the product focus of the Digital Factory represents a significant pivot. With the Digital Factory approach, each Factory crafts their own digital products. Those digital products may interlock far-flung components, each of which may require their own technology stacks. While this “lego-like” assembly method accelerates product creation, it also adds complexity to underlying IT operations that already span multicloud and data center resources.
IT no longer has the surplus capacity or incremental funding to help each Factory stand up unique processes or toolchains. Achieving even limited toolchain standardization within a large enterprise can be difficult. For example, developers are known for their ability to circumvent most constraints IT teams have placed on their timelines or toolsets. Access to on-demand cloud services driven by Infrastructure as Code have made this inevitable—especially when combined with the myriad of development environments and technologies that are instantly available to any development group.
For all these reasons, standardization is key to building a Digital Factory. Consensus must be reached across Development and IT Operations about the need for a foundational automation platform. The entire organization must also align around a toolset that addresses the lion’s share of vital requirements beyond simple financial benefits. Such alignment allows knowledge to be shared among teams, helping the IT Center of Excellence provide expert support for Factory work at Factory pace.
The role of the IT Center of Excellence is to mechanize the foundational automation elements required to speed development and operations execution. It does so by employing reusable tools and repeatable processes that establish best practices while conforming to enterprise-level funding constraints. As a result, the IT Center of Excellence accelerates product or service introductions and cuts technology overhead by reducing management staff and tool licenses.
In essence, the IT Center of Excellence delivers digital supply chain management for the Digital Factory.