Consumerization of IT is imposing lot of challenges to IT management. In this presentation, I describe a comprehensive approach that IT can take to handle, with specific recommendations.

1. Consumerization of IT
Dr. Rama Kanneganti
HCL Fellow
http://www.kanneganti.com

2. Core theme
• What is consumerization of IT?
• How does it effect IT departments?
• What should the IT departments do?

3. Q: How were applications being developed by Enterprise IT
departments?
To understand how consumerization is impacting IT, let us
see how IT develops applications in the enterprise.

4. Enterprise Apps for people: A brief
Introduction
1950’s
•IT gave
businesses
growth
•IT supported
large scale
information
processing
1980’s
•IT started
large scale
automation of
business
activities
•Ubiquity of
client server
computing
•Rise of Object
Oriented
systems
1990’s
•IT started
with
packaged
apps
•94% of
custom apps
failed
•Rise of ERP
systems
2000’s
•Internet era
•Integration as
the main
theme
•ERP upgrades
leading to rise
of BPM
•Rule Engines
The focus for IT has been on business and business support. People are
incidental – that is, applications are developed for functionality.

5. Typical application development in the
enterprises
•Map the enterprise need to a technical capability
•Establish a business case with ROI plan
•Can be business need or business strategy driven
EA Planning
•See if there is a packaged application
•Plan the customization per requirements and strategy
•Understand where custom app development is needed
Technology planning
•Use the technology standards to choose a stack
•Choose a methodology that suits the team and the
problem
•Develop/customize the application
Development
•Make it a part of the offering: (Desktop standard
deployment)
•If web, make it a part of the portal
•Publicize through standard change management processes
Delivery
 FOCUS on the user’s
stated needs
 Tends to be large and
complex applications
 There are no simple apps;
every application is
assimilated into a large
application as a an
additional requirement.
The summary is that
process is tilted towards
applications that are built
to last. “big industry
approach”

6. Enterprise IT apps: Characteristics
 Applications take long time to develop
 Typically they are large, and serve long term needs of the enterprise
 Applications serve common denominator
 They address most common needs
 Applications lag behind the market needs
 Do not handle new technologies well – go for longevity
 Applications, developed based on consensus needs, lack focus
 They do too many things
 Applications are expensive to develop
 Compared to consumer apps

7. Q: How were applications developed in the consumer
world?
The consumer world is different; let us see how those
applications were developed historically.

8. Consumer application development
through history
Desktop PC era
• Purpose: Mostly
towards PC users
and hobbyists
• Chief
Characteristics:
Mostly stand alone.
Focus on using the
machine the best.
• Distribution
mechanism: Via
disks, magazines,
and FTP sites
Internet era
• Purpose: General
users of internet
• Chief Characteristic:
Leverages
information in the
world. Focus on
transactional world
• Distribution
Mechanism:
Internet and search
engines
App era
• Purpose: All users
• Chief Characteristic:
Integration of
physical, personal,
social, and location
information and
transactional world.
• Distribution
mechanism:
Internet and app
stores

9. Consumer application development:
Salient facts
• Based on the user needs
• Addressing long tail
• Limited focus: Do one thing well
Which apps are developed?
• Aligning with the industry leader (Example: Microsoft,
Apple, Google, Facebook etc.)
• Built on an API or SDK or eco-system
How do they develop apps?
• Often controlled by the platform or eco-system
provider
• Need to upgrade and support if the platform evolves
How are the apps delivered?
 FOCUS on the end result
not on the user’s stated
needs
 User’s inferred needs also
a part
 User needs are
subordinate to end result
 Prune the stated needs to
build focus
The summary is that
process is tilted towards
applications that are built
to change. Also, focus on
specific needs of people.

10. Consumer Applications: Salient facets
 Only interesting applications get developed
 Developers are impatient with problems they do not understand
 All user needs may not be satisfied
 Focus only on the larger segment of users
 Replication of capabilities in many applications => Waste of energy
in solving the same problems
 Think how many account balance apps will be there!
 Lack of uniformity in solutions (depends on the platform)
 Need for control and governance on the applications

11. 11
Consumerization: Why should
the IT care?

12. Reason 1: In some industries, IT is
forced to deal with consumers
• In several service industries like retail, retail
banking, entertainment, and health, IT
department is forced to work with consumers,
whose ways of working and expectations
• Examples: Customer facing websites; customer
communications; gathering data from customer
systems; marketing campaigns; customer
support; innovative apps to encourage customer
advocacy; customer driven information gathering
…

13. Reason 2: Internal users are behaving
like consumers
Aging workforce means
new incoming workforce
are used to consumer
technologies
Existing users use
consumer technologies
to conduct activities on
the devices and the net.
1. #1 web site for spending
time for people: Facebook.
2. Most people discover
service outlets using apps
like Yelp.
3. Consumer technologies
are shaping the way users
use technology.

14. Reason 3: Consumer technologies are becoming
cheaper than enterprise technologies
• Public cloud is cheaper (often) than internal machines
• Compute servers (open computer servers etc) are cheaper
than commercial equivalents
Consumer hardware is becoming cheaper
• Most of the development tools are focused on consumer
technologies.
• Open source is prevalent on the consumer tech -- the
frameworks and tools favor consumer focused development
Dev tools are cheaper for consumers
• Innovations in interactions, usage patterns and best practices
are driven by consumer technologies.
• Technologies supporting those innovations come from the
consumer world as well.
New innovations focus on consumers more
Most
enterprise IT
departments
are looking to
consumer
technologies
to reduce
costs and
improve
quality in the
enterprise
apps.

15. 15
Consumerization: What does it
mean to IT?

16. What we need: to get the best of both
models of app development
Best of enterprise IT
• SLA’s
• Governance
• Robustness
• Alignment to the enterprise
Best of consumer IT
• Choice of apps
• Extreme segmentation of users
• Quick turn around
• Alignment to users

17. How it changes the IT landscape
Small number of
large applications
Large number of
small applications
Future status
Move towards
consumerization
Current status
Note: App here means an isolated functionality that people use
Applications may be replicated to focus on different user groups.
3. Deployment?
4. Support?
5. Enterprise architecture?
6. Goverance?
Questions: How does this move
change:
1. Development?
2. Life cycle plan?

18. Challenges in transitioning enterprise to
consumerization – I
• Enterprise apps calculate
ROI over long period (ex: 7
years to 5 years).
• Enterprise apps need
stability over such long
term: means they don’t use
cutting edge technologies
• Enterprise apps are large
and monolithic – changes
or contributions are difficult
to make.
Development Cost Unless we make
changes the way we
develop, large
number of small apps
increase
development costs
tremendously.
Example: Google
development of
applications.
IPhone
applications

19. Challenges in transitioning enterprise to
consumerization – II
• Enterprise apps are geared
towards slow and careful
deployment. Quarterly releases
are common.
• Enterprise deployment often
means training of users, support
staff, and operational staff
• Enterprise has only one
deployment at a time; more
versions of software is not often
attempted in enterprise.
Deployment cost If we need to deploy
large number of
small apps, it makes
the deployment lot
more complex and
costly.
Example: On
average, Amazon
can deploy an app
every 11 seconds

20. Challenges in transitioning enterprise
to consumerization - III
• Enterprise apps are
optimized for supporting
users over many years. In
fact, the ROI banks on
decreasing the ops cost over
years
• Enterprise apps mature over
years to reduce the
operational cost.
• Enterprise apps
Operations cost
If we need to deploy
large number of
small apps, it makes
the deployment lot
more complex and
costly.
Example: Instagram
supports 100’s of
Terabytes of DB with
2 ops persons.

21. Recap: What consumerization means
• Consumerization of IT means offering choice to
users, evolving apps quickly, and agile offerings to
customers.
• “LARGE NUMBER OF SMALL APPS” (APP = small unit
of meaningful functionality for a consumer)
• The way IT operates, this demand increases
– Development cost
– Deployment cost
– Operations cost
However, best in class app development reduce the
costs, while moving towards consumerization.

22. Dealing with consumerization in IT: A
recipe

23. A framework for consumerization of IT
What to
develop?
How to
develop?
How to let
others
develop?
How to get
people to
adopt?
We have to reduce the cost of
changing technologies and
bring domain focus.
Platform based
development
with DevOps
Question Key Challenge Key Concept
We have to make use of the
existing enterprise assets.
Innovation has to have ROI
Pace Layered
Architecture
We have to create an eco-
system so that others
(partners, other divisions,
clients) can develop apps.
API based
development
We have to get people to
discover the right apps for
them without spending on
support costs.
Modern App
stores

24. Pace Layered Architecture

25. Pace Layered Architecture: What it means to IT
25
Systems of
Record
Systems of
Change
Systems of
Innovation
Standard
Processes
Differentiated
processes
Innovative
processes
COTS, ERP
Packages
Customization
via SOA, BPM
Custom apps,
Decision support
systems (Data
related)
No uncertainty:
What to do and
how to do
Partial certainty:
We only know
what to do, but
not how to do.
Full uncertainty:
What to do and
how to do.
EA perspective
Process
perspective App perspective IT perspective
Consumerization mostly effects systems of innovation.
We need to let different parts of IT evolve at different paces.

26. Pace Layered Architecture in action
• Based of technology maturity
• Based on the existing IT landscape
Identify the different
layers of
architecture
• Based on the differentiated focus
• Based on industry directionsAlign the layers with
business vision
• Different layers evolve differently
• Standardize at the systems of record
• Support diverse technologies at innovation
layer
Establish governance
for different layers
differently

27. Platform based development
with integrated DevOps

28. Platform based development
• A reference architecture implementation
• A platform ready to be deployed for
development, testing, and production use
• A platform that standardizes on core support,
deployment processes and tools (DevOps)
What is it?
• To reduce the support and deployment costs
• To focus on the core domain problem =>
reduction of development cost
Why do we need it?
• Long answer: create an integration ready, cloud
ready, enterprise ready platform with coherent
elements
• Integrate DevOps tooling into the platform
How do we develop it?
Example platform:
1. Google
platform
2. Facebook
platform
3. Azure platform
4. SFDC platform
Key lesson learnt:
1. Enterprises need
multiple platforms
2. Pattern based
development of
platforms
3. Industry specific
platforms to solve
specific pain
points

29. API based development for
external and internal needs

30. Target state architecture: Technology Perspective using API’s
30
Web
applicatio
n
Web
application +
Progressive
enhancement
s
Web application
+ Native
extensions
Native
applicatio
n
IOS/Andr
oid
HTML + Platforms
(ex: Phongap)
HTML5 +
shims
HTML5
Internal Web
applications
Web
workflow
Older style web apps; driven
by the functional
requirements
However we change, we will
deliver the same
functionality => no
transformation.
All form
factors
Mobile
apps
New style apps; driven by the art of possibility
Well integrated; services offered to partners =>
creating partner ecosystem
Services taken from partners and public =>
transformed apps
Greater need for flexible apps and quicker ROI
Partner
web
External web
applications
Partner web
Back office Back office
External
services
External
services
Internal Web
applications
Integrated web
Social web
Applications
continuum to
support anytime-
anywhere design.
A standard
architecture
transformation:
Moving from monolithic
web to platform +
different apps
Different paradigm
support
Based on analytics,
application evolution
Ability to integrate
modern practices as
they evolve.

31. Using SOA to support different presentations of services
31
Backend
Web
applications
Web workflow
 Older style web apps; may not
work on new form factors
 Not well suited for modern needs
 Needs too much work to have
multiple apps for multiple
platforms
Backend
All form factors Mobile apps
ESB
 Working on all form factors
 Reuse the same logic (and data)
via ESB
 Mobile and BPM and web apps
work off the same code base
 Front-end strategy for developing
what and which paradigm.
BPM apps
Backend Backend Backend Backend
HCL’s architecture best practices:
1. Composite application development
2. SOA as the backbone for modern application development
3. Data services + Business services + Technology services delivered via SOA
Consumerization demands repurposing of the services for different
applications

32. App store for application
delivery (discovery,
provisioning, analytics, and
support)

33. Complete Application life cycle: What App store provides
33
APIs for
developers
App
discovery
mechanisms
App
promotion
Social
context for
apps
Peer-to-peer
app support
App
upgrades
Multi-device
apps
Multi-
channel apps Technology + Tools + Frameworks +
Social context + Application
Creating an ecosystem of apps:
Run time support for
application discovery,
provisioning, integration, and
analytics
Design time support via
platform and app
registration, categorization,
social context
Examples: Google App store,
FB app store, Apple App store

34. Examples of app store: ITunes
34
Technology: Check. Delivery mechanism:
Check. Platform support: No. Vendor control:
Definitely. Versatile: No web – only their own.

35. Examples of app store: Facebook
35
Technology: Check. Delivery mechanism:
Check. Vendor control: Definitely.
Versatile: Multi-platform.

36. Examples of app store: Google Chrome
app store
36
Technology: Check. Delivery mechanism:
Check. Vendor control: Partially
Versatile: Multi-platform.

37. Building your own appstore
• Registration services for registering application
• Application meta data services for configuration, backup, security etc.
Implement design time API’s
• Hosting API’s to run on the platform
• API’s for runtime analytics
• API’s for user management and provisioning
Implement run time API’s
• Platforms for users to develop applications
• Support for standard patterns and technology platforms
Create a set of platforms

38. Related work
• Another way consumerization of IT is handled is
through supporting UDA (User Defined
Applications). Examples: ServiceNow, Microsoft
(Sharepoint + Friends).
• API based development: Most modern web
development (see: www.leanstack.io for
examples).
• App Store: Cloud based app deployment has
become standard – part of app store
functionality.

39. Concluding Remarks
Consumerization is forcing enterprise to
become agile: from concept for
production
Four key elements to support this brave
new world are:
 Pace Layered Architecture
 Platform based development (with DevOps)
 API’s for rapid development
 App Stores for app delivery and support

40. End of Deck