2017 Planning Guide Overview: Architecting aDigital Business With Sensing, Adapting andScalingPublished: 14 October 2016 ID: G00315908

Analyst(s): Kyle Hilgendorf, Paul DeBeasi

The exponential rate of technological innovation presents organizations withthe opportunity to architect transformative business solutions in an on-demand world. In 2017, technical professionals must focus on solutions thatsense, adapt and scale to become digital disruptors.

AnalysisThis document was revised on 19 October 2016. The document you are viewing is the correctedversion. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.

It is time to prepare for the on-demand digital business era — when digital businesses will rely onautomation, analytics and applications more than ever before. In this new era:

■ Business processes will happen in seven seconds, rather than seven days.

■ IT will be virtually invisible — yet very relevant.

■ Human and machine activities will blend together within system designs (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. On-Demand Digital Business Characteristics

Source: Gartner (October 2016)

Algorithms are at the heart of any solution that will drive the on-demand digital business. Thesealgorithms blend digital, human and operational processes into fully automated, end-to-endsolutions that can drive incredible business value beyond what nondigital businesses can offer.However, these algorithms should not focus solely on either technical innovation or businessinnovation. The most successful on-demand digital business will combine both dimensions ofinnovation to deliver market disruption and differentiation.

To compete effectively in the on-demand digital economy, enterprises will need to transform intoon-demand digital businesses. This transformation is about more than just improving the business.Ultimately, it is about survival. To participate in the modern digital business economy, thistransformation will be imperative.

In 2017, technical professionals must prepare to architect the on-demand solutions and enablinginfrastructures that their organizations will need to compete in this new business ecosystem. Theplanning repercussions of this trend will impact a range of technology areas — from applications todata, from cloud computing to collaboration, and from mobility to the Internet of Things (IoT).Gartner's Planning Guides for 2017 will help technical professionals take the key planning stepsrequired to meet this challenge.

Research HighlightsIn 2017, the fundamental question facing technical professionals will be, "How can we architect thetransformative, on-demand solutions necessary to stay relevant in a digital economy?" The high-level answer will be found by focusing on three key elements of the algorithm (see Figure 2):

■ Sense is where the algorithm begins. This element focuses on the edge or the front end ofsystems, and enables hyperinstrumentation.

■ Adapt is the heart of the algorithm. It focuses on the IT systems and data analysis, striving toderive meaningful insights and predictions out of raw data.

■ Scale is where the algorithm runs. This element focuses on ensuring that "sense" and "adapt"happen every time and everywhere.

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Figure 2. The Path to the On-Demand Digital Business: Sense, Adapt and Scale

Source: Gartner (October 2016)

Sense

Historically, sensing was performed through human observation or discrete systems. It basicallyamounted to reporting. When used to support decision making, this approach was often disjointed,siloed, slow, out-of-date and inconsistent.

In the on-demand digital business, sensing will be driven by the collection of more data than everbefore. Sensing must be automated, integrated and smart. The on-demand digital business willneed to synthesize the information it requires from vast pools of internal and external data, in orderto immediately sense and identify changes to what it is trying to monitor. IoT will be of majorimportance to sensing. The report "2017 Planning Guide for the Internet of Things" discussescritical, IoT-related planning considerations that focus on the following 2017 trends:

■ IoT business value will compel IT participation.

■ IoT platform services will evolve and segment.

■ The IoT architect will emerge as an essential IoT role.

■ Security concerns will continue to be a major obstacle to IoT adoption.

Sensing will also monitor the needs of business ecosystems, composed of employees, customersand partners. One way this aspect of sensing will occur is through interactions with mobile devices,applications and interfaces. As mobility becomes increasingly integral to business strategies, mobilearchitecture will become essential to sensing the behavior of humans. The report "2017 PlanningGuide for Mobility and Unified Workspaces" provides relevant planning considerations, focusing onthe following mobility trends:

■ As mobile device growth slows, the focus of mobile strategies will shift to process optimization.

■ Organizations will merge mobility into standard IT planning and operations.

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■ Unified workspace design will emerge as an indicator of forward-thinking organizations.

■ User experience, not functional utility alone, will continue to drive mobile value.

■ Enterprise mobility management (EMM) will become a viable PC management alternative formost use cases.

Another way in which organizations will sense and interact with employees, customers and partnersis through their digital workplace strategies. The development of a digital workplace strategy will bea key imperative for businesses to keep pace with a fast-changing workplace and workforce. Tomeet this goal, organizations must change the nature of work, engage employees and reimagineworkplace technology. The report "2017 Planning Guide for Collaboration and Content" providesplanning guidance on the following trends related to collaboration and content:

■ SaaS will play an increasingly central role in IT's application portfolio.

■ More content will be managed from the cloud using hybrid, multiplatform solutions.

■ Pressure will increase to deliver real-time communication and collaboration from cloud services.

■ The adoption of Office 365 will force enterprises to change their IT practices.

Adapt

Eventually, organizations will use the data collected in the sense portion of the algorithm to react oradapt to the changes they are detecting. All that collected data will require context or analysis toprovide the value that the business needs. If sensing is where the algorithm starts, adapting iswhere the organization begins to take action.

Adaptability is not new. Organizations have always had to adapt and evolve to survive — but today,they must do so with much greater speed and agility. Adapting today requires:

■ Analyzing, predicting from, prescribing from and responding to the sensory data

■ Automating the response in real time or near real time

■ Learning and adjusting to improve the response

This is the heart and soul of the on-demand digital business — and analytics and data will play acritical role. The report "2017 Planning Guide for Data and Analytics" provides specific planningconsiderations that focus on the following 2017 data management and analytics trends:

■ Distributed data and analytics will demand a comprehensive end-to-end architecture.

■ Analytics will go viral, within and outside the enterprise.

■ The cloud will be an indispensable platform for data and analytics workloads.

■ Executive demands to share data across business ecosystems will drive new roles and skills fortechnical professionals.

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Adapting will require more than storing and analyzing data. Organizations must build applicationsand leverage platform strategies to process and transform that data, and to integrate it into othersystems. Organizations must also adopt agile methodologies that accelerate software developmentand improve IT responsiveness. The report "2017 Planning Guide for Application PlatformStrategies" provides specific planning considerations that focus on the following 2017 applicationplatform and development trends:

■ The digital business platform is cloud-native and radically decentralized.

■ Event-driven architecture goes mainstream.

■ Lightweight and managed-application infrastructure replace heavy on-premises platforms fromsingle vendors.

■ Componentization of front-end web code enables reuse and better maintainability acrossdevices.

■ Continuous improvement is the most valuable developer skill.

The processes and technologies used to adapt — as well as to sense — will have profound securityand risk implications. Digital business growth greatly increases the attack surface that exposessystems, applications, data and people to threats. Speed and automation are doubled-edgedswords. Both are essential to the on-demand digital business, but they also increase risk beyondwhat typical organizations are used to. Organizations must protect against increasinglysophisticated cyberthreats by employing automated detection and response technologies. Thereport "2017 Planning Guide for Security and Risk Management" provides specific planningconsiderations that focus on the following 2017 security trends:

■ Digital business resilience requires evidence-based approaches to cybersecurity practices andtechnologies.

■ Increasing security monitoring and response demands strong practices combined withemerging technology approaches.

■ Hybrid cloud, containers and DevOps necessitate the evolution of network and hostinfrastructure security approaches.

■ More-advanced and more-frequent attacks are driving maturity in the security capabilities ofmobile and endpoint platforms and add-ons.

■ Increased data usage needs and SaaS adoption necessitate more application- and data-levelsecurity controls.

Given the growing importance of safeguarding access to new "sense" and "adapt" systems, identityand access management (IAM) will become an increasingly critical planning consideration in the on-demand digital business era. Many on-demand businesses must migrate from older authenticationtechnologies to newer authentication systems that provide higher assurance for multipleconstituencies supporting employees, customers, partners and things. The report "2017 Planning

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Guide for Identity and Access Management" examines the high-level planning implications posedby the following 2017 IAM trends:

■ Office 365 continues to disrupt enterprise IAM.

■ Third-wave authentication will accelerate.

■ Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) identity services for application migration become a reality.

■ Advanced analytics will permeate IAM services.

■ IoT will raise the stakes for IAM.

■ Blockchain will advance decentralized IAM.

Scale

To gain the degree of automation needed — and to sense and adapt quickly enough — the on-demand digital business must be based on a scalable architecture. And when it comes to scalablearchitectures, nothing beats the cloud. Cloud services offer both the near-limitless capacity and theglobal distribution needed to ensure that the sense and adapt portions of your algorithms operatesuccessfully, everywhere and at all times. The report "2017 Planning Guide for Cloud Computing"provides planning advice and guidance directed at the following 2017 cloud computing trends:

■ Organizations will prioritize building, implementing and maturing their cloud strategies.

■ Multiprovider strategies will become the de facto standard for IaaS and platform as a service(PaaS).

■ Corporate IT will live in a hybrid world for the foreseeable future.

■ Most organizations will forgo trying to build full on-premises private clouds.

Although Gartner recommends that businesses take a cloud-first approach to infrastructureplanning for the on-demand digital business, "cloud first" does not mean "cloud always." The shiftto the cloud will not happen overnight, and important systems will continue to live in noncloudenvironments. As a result, continuous renovation of the data center and of infrastructure andoperations (I&O) architectures will play an important role in scaling for the on-demand digitalbusiness. The report "2017 Planning Guide for Data Center Modernization and Infrastructure Agility"provides focused planning advice related to the following key trends that will impact the data centerin 2017:

■ Organizations will leverage disruptive technologies to accelerate business objectives.

■ Network automation will enable on-premises and hybrid agility.

■ IT organizations will buy, not build, infrastructure and application platforms.

■ Flash will dominate storage architectures.

■ IT organizations will protect data and services regardless of their location.

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The exponential rate of technological innovation presents organizations with an opportunity toarchitect their on-demand digital businesses by focusing on solutions that sense, adapt and scale.There has never been a better time for technical professionals to assume a leadership role thathelps their organizations thrive in the new on-demand digital economy.

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