the agility quadrant - 10th magnitude...scale faster, rapidly move infrastructure, reduce time to...

How it can help you lead the charge to digital innovation

THE AGILITY QUADRANT

2 | T H E A G I L I T Y Q U A D R A N T

LE A D T H E C H A R G E TO D I G I TA L I N N O VAT I O N

There is no alternative to digital transformation. Visionary companies will carve out new strategic options for themselves—those that don’t adapt, will fail.— Roland Berger

Introduction If an organization aspires to not just survive, but to thrive in today’s business climate, they need to make the transformation to digital.

In order to innovate and truly disrupt their

respective industries, organizations must

scale faster, rapidly move infrastructure,

reduce time to market, and anticipate

customer needs with data-driven decision

making. Regardless of your industry, you’re

competing on a new playing field. A space

where the companies that will flourish

are the ones that have embraced a digital

transformation mindset.

In addition, they are building a cloud-

enabled, data-first culture and have created

a plan of action that reflects it. So, true

innovators clearly understand that digital

transformation is not just about changes

in technology but also, and maybe more

importantly, about cultural change within

the organization.

According to global strategy firm Roland

Berger, “There is no alternative to digital

transformation. Visionary companies

will carve out new strategic options for

themselves—those that don’t adapt,

will fail.”

“The number of digital options open to

businesses is growing exponentially, and

with no sign of letting up. At the same time,

digitalization poses a huge threat to existing

competitive positions and is radically

shifting companies’ chances of winning

the game.”

We are now in a marketplace bolstered by

increasingly smart, robust, and accessible

platforms driven by data intelligence that



span industries. From American Express to

Lyft, digital transformations fuel innovation,

swift change, and exceptional service.

You undoubtedly hope to improve your

chances of winning the game. To do so,

it’s vital that you move faster, better, and

smarter. The goal is to truly delight your

customers, and one of the most efficient

ways to do this is by making all the

component parts work together seamlessly

in a cloud environment. Today’s business

environment challenges—and often even

demands—all companies to think and act

more like a software company.

But an organization doesn’t have to BE a software company to think and act like one.

Adopting this mindset has nothing to do

with coding. It’s more about an underlying

shift in how you approach business,

streamline operations, make decisions, and

create value for your customers.

The term ‘customer experience’ won’t exist in the organization of the future. It will be so deeply entrenched in a company’s product, process, and culture that it will be synonymous with the brand and represent the only way to do business.— Ann Lewnes, SVP and CMO, Adobe



In most industries today, just about

every customer interaction is powered

and facilitated by software. This means

your organization must become skilled

and extremely efficient at conceiving,

developing, and launching technology—just

like a modern software development shop.

To do this, you need to:• Develop an ethos of agility for faster and

shorter development cycles

• Adopt software practices for a more

connected and more secure business

• Fully embrace automation and continuous

feedback to measure and refine processes

and improve customer interactions

• Infuse artificial intelligence into your

applications and workflows—to act quickly

and confidently. Generating insights from

your data allows organizations to make

better decisions to better serve customers,

stakeholders, and the business.

Thinking and acting like a software

company means your organization leverages

streamlined teams and processes to focus

on what it does best. You must break

away from traditional processes and fully

utilize the amazing power of the cloud and

your data. The end result is an innovation

machine—an industry disruptor.

So, how does an organization get there?

Why every company should think and act like a software company

Intelligent automation will manage 85% of businesses’ customer relationships by 2020.— Gartner



In a modern company that hopes to remain competitive, processes must be streamlined and teams must work together to build the technical and organizational agility needed to thrive in this new business climate, not to mention the momentum they need to reshape the landscape of their industry. Companies who are geared toward success have developed the capacity to adapt to change rapidly, meeting the expectations of their most demanding customers by better understanding and continually improving the customer experience. They have a firm foundation supported by the robust technical ability needed to move, refactor, and scale. They are also able to evolve to meet the expectations of this new marketplace. And that is precisely what a company needs to implement to become an industry disruptor—a combination of organizational agility and technical agility. Organizational agilityOrganizational agility simply means that a company can move very rapidly. Its people are lean and agile. They have teams that can respond quickly to changes. They streamline their processes and strengthen their focus so that they can continue to be effective, even when they need to rapidly switch targets. They are focused on doing the things that bring the most value to their business. It’s DevOps from a team/people/process perspective.

Technical agilityTechnical agility is the corresponding component of organizational agility. In essence, it’s the ability to update and change the infrastructure, applications, data, and business processes as rapidly as the people and teams in an organization can shift their focus. In nearly every business today, business processes are codified in IT systems. If these can’t be updated and improved quickly, the organization can’t pivot quickly enough and is stuck working around legacy business processes and automation that doesn’t support their current needs.

Disrupting in the digital age

Generating insights from your data allows organizations to be more proactive and efficient in their applications and business processes. Historical analysis is required to know where you have been, but predictive analytics allow you to get an idea of where you are going and provide better services to your end users.— Ryan Chynoweth, 10th Magnitude, Data Scientist



The combination of Organizational agility and Technical agility influences how well an organization can fuel innovation, swiftly change focus, and disrupt an industry—potentially triggering radical innovation in the process. An MIT Sloan study found that if you combine these two areas of focus (or these two axes) and reach the upper-right hand quadrant to become a true disruptor, you’ll be 26% more profitable than your competitors. How do organizations combine organizational and technical agility and move to the upper-right hand quadrant? To become agents of change?

Combining these two axes is how organizations get into a digitally transformed state.

How to become a disruptor The X axis is Organizational agilityA company with excellent organizational agility is capable of changing rapidly in response to shifting market demands, as well as changing objectives and goals—all with fast feedback to help influence how they run as an organization. In a digitally transformed company, that organizational agility has often originally evolved from lean and agile software and IT practices, but more recently it’s been adopted top-down across organizations as part of a ‘lean enterprise’ initiative.

The Y axis is Technical agilityAnother vital aspect of growth is technical agility. Yes, you need to push your organizational agility forward, but your

The Agility Quadrant

Combining Organizational agility and Technical agility is how organizations reach the upper-right quadrant to become industry disruptors.



technical agility needs speed as well. Technical agility is the ability to execute and roll out new technologies quickly. Is the market changing? Are the needs of users shifting? Technical agility allows you to meet these challenges quickly and efficiently.

Need an example? Okay. If your CRM systems are gathering data, but if your sales processes aren’t being updated to reflect this information, you need to improve your company’s technical agility. Or, say you run an ad during the Super Bowl. The response is all you hoped it would be— if not more!—and now your servers are completely overwhelmed. Your system simply can’t handle the load. Technical agility could prevent this from happening in the first place.

So, how do we move people to the upper right quadrant of the Agility Quadrant?

From laggard to innovatorMost organizations fall into one or more

of the four quadrants. (Laggards, Digerati, Agilists, and Disruptors) Combining Technical agility with Organizational agility is the powerful combination of practices to help you move towards digital transformation. They work hand-in-hand to ensure you can learn and adapt quickly enough to thrive inside of, and even disrupt, rapidly changing marketplaces. Some companies can help you on this journey; we can meet you anywhere you are on the path, and we can help you create a clear vision for where you need to go. At 10th Magnitude, we specialize in four core solution areas to facilitate and implement change. These solution areas are supported by our comprehensive Managed Services and guided by our 10vū™ suite of tools. While these areas are intrinsically linked, there’s value in providing some distinction to paint the holistic picture...

The end result is an innovation machine—an industry disruptor.



Solution Area 1:Data Center Transformation

Data Center Transformation (DCT) uplifts your organization into the cloud. It gives

you the ability to add or move infrastructure

quickly—in many cases treating your

infrastructure as software—allowing you to

modify and manage your IT infrastructure as

easily as changing a line of code.

DCT starts with lift-and-shift, moving your

infrastructure and applications to your new

home in the cloud. But it doesn’t stop there.

Microsoft Azure helps you modernize your

applications and infrastructure with a cloud

strategy that is faster, safer, and more secure.

Machines are replicated to the cloud and

existing processes, patterns, compliance

requirements, and security permissions are

maintained—all in a cost eff ective and timely

manner. Once you’ve lifted and shifted in

the cloud, there’s more to consider in your

transformation.

Even in the cloud, governance remains a

critical part of any IT organization and cloud-

based infrastructure. While governance in

the cloud can pose new challenges, it also

brings great new opportunities. Challenge: consumption-based costs can get out of

hand if infrastructure is overprovisioned /

Opportunity: capital costs for new software

projects are nearly non-existent. Challenge: security over infrastructure-as-code can be

diffi cult / Opportunity: infrastructure can be

securely created, modifi ed, and destroyed so

you can increase your agility. Governance in

the cloud, done right, strongly enhances the

opportunities while controlling and minimizing

the challenges.

10th Magnitude gives you the power and

fl exibility to scale your business and bring a

signifi cant return on your cloud investment.

We can help you do governance right.

Microsoft Azure helps you modernize your applications and infrastructure with a cloud strategy that is faster, safer, and more secure.



Bey Treynor from Google, says Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is “what happens when a software engineer is tasked with what used to be called operations.” Good SRE practices ensure reliable, high performance architectures that scale eff ortlessly, degrade gracefully and fully support numerous and challenging business demands.

The cloud changes the IT paradigm. It enables capabilities that weren’t commonly available in the on-premises data centers in years past. For instance, instead of upgrading named machines with new versions of the application, cloud deployment best practices suggest spinning up a parallel machine with the new application version, moving traffi c to the new machine, and simply killing the old machine. This is commonly known as blue/green deployment. Technologies such as containerization make that even easier.

There are a few key examples of how cloud native design patterns are diff erent. First, they encourage immutable infrastructure—infrastructure that, once deployed, is never upgraded, reconfi gured, or even patched. It is simply replaced when needed. This means there are no longer “upgrades” but simply new deployments, eliminating the need for maintenance downtime windows. Another example is scalability. Spinning up new infrastructure is fast and inexpensive, so applications should be designed to run on minimal hardware when possible and

scaled up and out automatically as the load increases. In a well-designed application with good infrastructure architecture, scaling changes (both up and down) can happen in seconds. One example of good practices enabled by these techniques are those listed by the Reactive Manifesto. Reactive applications are responsive, resilient, elastic and message driven. Without many of the aforementioned design principles, it would be diffi cult to implement the patterns demanded by the Reactive Manifesto.

10th Magnitude helps organizations ensure reliable, high performance architectures that scale eff ortlessly, degrade gracefully and fully support numerous and challenging business demands.

Solution Area 2:Site Reliability Engineering

Systems built as Reactive Systems are more fl exible, loosely-coupled and scalable. This makes them easier to develop and amenable to change. They are signifi cantly more tolerant of failure and when failure does occur they meet it with elegance rather than disaster. Reactive Systems are highly responsive, giving users eff ective interactive feedback.

— The Reactive Manifesto



Application modernization aids your organization in bringing your transformation to a truly cloud-native architecture and cloud-native development practices. Time and again, these have been shown to speed application delivery cycles, dramatically reduce both planned and unplanned downtime, provide higher levels of security and do all of things at a reduced cost. Modernizing your application portfolio means you can stop worrying about where you’ll run your applications, focus on your business diff erentiators, reduce the cost and eff ort of development and get to market faster.

As most organizations move to the cloud, they fi nd they can dramatically increase their software delivery cadence. This, in turn, exposes several challenges that were concealed behind long delivery cycles. Examples include long quality assurance phases, tightly coupled architectures, implicit component dependencies, lack of suffi cient production telemetry, organizational expectations, and disconnected development, testing and operations teams. These aren’t new problems for most organizations, but they become more acute as delivery speeds increase.

As more organizations have moved to the cloud, integrated lean/agile and DevOps techniques and rearchitected their applications—good practices have begun

to emerge. A strong app modernization eff ort will consider these approaches, tailoring them to the problems at hand. For instance, the Twelve Factor methodology (https://12factor.net) provides good technical guidance for delivering web applications, especially those that are positioned as software-as-a-service products. On the people and process side, approaches such as lean and agile software delivery (Scrum and Kanban, for instance) provide a framework to help teams adjust to the faster, yet more sustainable, pace of delivery.

At 10th Magnitude, we holistically approach app modernization through a focus on people, process and technology—all with a singular focus on delivering high quality customer value at a fast cadence. By aligning these three highly correlated pillars, we can help you decrease time to market, scale on demand, and increase your marketplace advantage.

Solution Area 3:Application Modernization

As most organizations move to the cloud, they fi nd they can dramatically increase their software delivery cadence.



The innovative and eff ective use of data is a key enabler for disruptive organizations. It’s sometimes asserted that “data is the new oil” in reference to how data is driving a revolution as big as the Industrial Revolution. Unlike oil, however, data is not a commodity. Instead, data is closer to intellectual property, and can form the foundation of strategic diff erentiators.

Data Intelligence (DI) includes tools, techniques, and processes of eff ective data use. DI encompasses machine learning, architecture of data estates, implementation and use of data lakes, and improvement of traditional data warehouses and transactional stores to support today’s streaming data.

Leveraging your data as a strategic diff erentiator requires diff erent tools and mindsets than have been traditionally used—structured data is supplemented with unstructured data stored in easily queried data lakes, and batch data processing is enhanced with processing streams of data in near real-time. Just these two examples dramatically increase the ability of organizations to use data eff ectively. Retail is the canonical example, where unstructured data is matched with structured data to train eff ective machine learning algorithms. These algorithms then recommend complementary products while the customer is still engaged in shopping, not hours later.

Data can lead to amazing things. Truly unlocking its power is the last step to becoming a digitally transformed business. Building artifi cial intelligence (AI) into all of your applications and workfl ows will not only increase your

process effi ciency, but it will improve each user’s experience, regardless of their level of expertise. Better yet, using nearly real-time analytics with dynamic visualization enables quick decision making— you’ll have full confi dence that you’re acting on the latest information.

10th Magnitude takes a holistic approach to Data Intelligence (DI), ensuring you are positioned to take full advantage of Azure while infusing AI into your digital transformation eff orts to become marketplace innovators.

The intelligent use of Data can lead to amazing things. We help them use AI and machine learning to streamline internal business

processes, improve user experiences, and clearly report timely metrics to the people who need to see them. DI is using data in an intelligent fashion to respond to change and know what to build next. And even inform how to build it. It is data lakes, AI and machine learning. It is the key to becoming a data-driven organization—one that can choose the very best strategic and tactical directions based on the power of data.

Solution Area 4: Data Intelligence

Data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profi table as a result.— McKinsey Global Institute



Our proprietary predictive cloud analytics tool, 10vū™, pulls metrics from your entire organization to help you take the fi rst steps toward total cloud transformation. In addition

to mapping out your journey. It also assists with asset inventory, cataloging and classifying data center assets. In a matter of days, 10vū™ will give your team the high-level Azure business model they need to propel your assets to the cloud in an effi cient, strategic, and predictable way.

This roadmap gives you a real-time view of your cloud

transformation—providing clear insight into planning, budgeting, and executing a successful journey, as well as revealing potential risks to avoid.

10vū™ Defi nes Your Cloud Journey

You’re not left high and dry as soon as the transition is complete. Thanks to our Managed Services, we become an extension of your team. We deliver agility, security, cost management, and stability— all within the cloud— so you can concentrate on what you do best: disrupting. Better yet, Managed

Services spans the entire breadth of what we do. We’re here to help you innovate with lightning fast support on a cloud-native automated infrastructure.

Our Managed Services support your organization’s mission-critical innovation by allowing you more time, greater fl exibility, and continuous innovation around your cloud strategies.

As Microsoft’s global award-winning Azure service provider, we bring years of experience to guide your teams, providing strategy, support, and data-driven recommendations. All built to help you lead the charge to a successful cloud journey.

And Our Managed Services Means We Become an Extension of Your Team



Regardless of your industry, maintaining agility is a key part of ensuring that you have the capability to achieve growth quickly and efficiently. But the type of agility you achieve plays a key part in this. Moving up through technical agility and over to organizational agility—from lifting your organization to the cloud to fully utilizing the amazing power of data—is how you can thrive, innovate, and disrupt your industry and get your competitors (and customers) to take notice.

Remember, every company is capable of taking their cue from successful software companies. It’s vital that you streamline the way you do business to provide greater value to your customers. Transitioning to the Disruptors quadrant of the Agility Quadrant model will empower your organization to achieve more faster than ever before.

The Agility Quadrant–a potent model for your organization to follow

Insights-driven businesses are growing at an average of more than 30% each year, and by 2021, are predicted to take $1.8 trillion annually from their less-informed peers. — Forrester Insights-Driven Businesses Set the

Pace for Global Growth Report

At 10th Magnitude, we move businesses to the cloud and beyond.

We harness the transformative power of Microsoft Azure to help our customers innovate, delight, and disrupt with reduced risk.

Better yet, we practice what we preach. 10th Magnitude was born in the cloud. We are cloud experts, and our sole focus is on making sure our

clients get the most from their cloud initiatives. How? By helping companies transform their IT delivery and management to enable innovation that

profoundly shifts the path of their business.

We’re proud to help businesses transform with innovative, cloud-based solutions. We combine elements from our multiple deep cloud competencies and expertise with technologies, tools, and platforms to help clients become

more agile, more customer-focused, and more operationally effi cient.

We are your end-to-end digital transformation partner. In other words, our work isn’t done as soon as you make the move to Azure. We continue to

walk with you as you take steps to innovate in your business and disrupt your industry as you delight your client base

Imagine what we can do together.

Contact Us:[email protected]

10thmagnitude.com

https://www.10thmagnitude.com/

mailto:[email protected]

https://www.10thmagnitude.com/

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