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Our Best DevOps Stories of 2017

Forrester has called 2018 to be the year of Enterprise DevOps. Accelerated delivery of application and services will be high on the enterprise agenda, and enterprises across sectors will be looking at leveraging DevOps with more confidence and vigor to enable greater business agility and speed.

It’s important for business leaders to stay on top of the best practices, tools and considerations in the space to stay ahead of their game with the best Devops strategies, and as we look ahead at what 2018 has in store, we bring out a list of the best DevOps stories that we published this year.

Taming the Cultural Transformation Beast in DevOps Adoption

In an article for CIOReview, Amit Gupta, Ness’ associate vice president of delivery, discusses how embedding DevOps into a company’s culture is critical to a successful adoption and execution, given that cultural transformation lies in the heart of an organization’s DevOps evolution.

Read more https://ness.com/taming-cultural-transformation-beast-devops-evolution/

Devops: Challenges and Considerations

In a Q&A with ITProPortal, Amit Gupta, leader of Ness Digital Engineering’s DevOps practice, discusses the adoption of DevOps within organizations, as well as the benefits and challenges DevOps presents to companies and the best means to adopt DevOps. Read more https://ness.com/devops-challenges-considerations/

Devops: Why getting the culture right is key to success

In a Q&A with ZDNet, Moshe Kranc, chief technology officer of Ness Digital Engineering, explains the current state of DevOps, and why breaking down the barriers between technology and business is the key to making DevOps work for organizations. “You have to do a lot of groundwork in your organisation to implement DevOps.

Read more https://ness.com/devops-getting-culture-right-key-success/

Spurring the DevOps Adoption

In an article for DevOps.com, Amit Gupta, leader of Ness Digital Engineering’s DevOps practice, describes the fundamental principles and four practical steps an organization should consider before beginning the DevOps adoption journey.

Read more https://ness.com/spurring-devops-adoption-journey/

DevOps Lessons Learned: Advice for IT Leaders

In an article from the Enterprisers Project, Amit Gupta, leader of Ness Digital Engineering’s DevOps practice, provides insights about five key components to account for when establishing DevOps while stressing the importance of peeling back each layer before deploying new tools and technologies.

Read more https://ness.com/devops-lessons-learned-advice-leaders/

Important Challenges & Considerations for HR Organizations in a Digital Economy

In an interaction with India in Making, Dr. Christina Augustine, HR Head, Ness Digital Engineering, outlines and elaborates on the key aspects of her growth journey as an HR leader, the challenges facing the HR industry, and how a constant learning culture is crucial to building a next-generation digital workforce. She also touches upon the HR initiatives and practices at Ness, and the company’s relentless focus on propelling a great learning environment to enhance its talent and capabilities in helping its customers attain success with their digital transformation goals.

read more »

Nessian on the Job – Bhushan Pargaonkar

Through our On the Job series, we introduce some of the men and women who play a pivotal role in the success story charted by Ness. In this edition, Bhushan Pargaonkar describes his role as an architect at Ness, his learning experiences and why he enjoys working at the company.

Name & Title: Bhushan Pargaonkar, Architect

Career progression:

I joined Ness as a Senior Developer based on my knowledge of technologies like Adobe Flex and Core Java. Initially, I worked on an innovation idea under the leadership of one of our delivery heads and it was a good experience. In the meanwhile, I kept working on various technologies and frameworks like PHP, Spring, Play, Web services, Hibernate and BIRT. Thereafter, I had the opportunity to move to Ness Hyderabad where I was involved with other technologies, such as Big Data and NoSQL for our financial domain customers. This gave me the privilege to work closely with some great minds at Ness. This was also a new phase in my career, as I received the chance to learn and contribute to projects and solutions apart from my regular line of work. Later, I moved to the Ness Solutions Architects Team and worked as the lead for the Rapid Experimentation Group, created for building POCs (Proof of Concepts) on state-of-the art technologies to demonstrate Ness’s capabilities to its customers.

What are your specific responsibilities?

I currently work closely with solution architects and contribute to various proposals with POCs or Point of Views on modern technologies to demonstrate Ness’s capabilities. I am also involved in some client engagements in the areas of DevOps, Machine Learning (ML) and Big Data.

What are your best learning experiences at Ness?

Overall, it has been a rewarding journey at Ness. I have evolved from a polyglot developer to an architect with a deeper understanding of platform engineering and new age technologies like Big Data, ML, and DevOps. Especially, ML and Artificial Intelligence interests me a lot and I keep exploring and experimenting with various ML problems and algorithms.

Your favorite part of working at Ness?

Ness provides a good work-life balance with great learning opportunities. I thoroughly enjoy participating in the various innovation events like Idea contests, Hackathons, TechDays, and the cultural activities like annual day celebrations, dance competitions, bay decoration contests, festivals etc. I also won the first edition of TechDays at Ness with my innovative solution.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I have made a lot of friends in the Ness Mumbai and Hyderabad centers and have a great time working with them. I like hanging out with my colleagues even when I’m outside of work.

Ness Appoints Senior Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions

TEANECK, NJ – December 20, 2017 Ness Digital Engineering has appointed David Mahoney to Senior Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions. Mahoney, an experienced growth strategist, will support the company’s commitment to providing clients with the advanced, forward-thinking expertise they need to evolve digital platforms that drive revenue and operational efficiency.

“As our clients’ business partner, we are focused on being at the forefront of innovation and expanding our expertise to help our clients build competitive advantage using technology,” said Paul Lombardo, Ness Digital Engineering CEO. “David has deep experience in helping companies leverage M&A to drive organic growth via added capabilities, intellectual property, and scale, which in turn, enables us to extend the value we provide to our customers and increase company and shareholder value.”

“I’m looking forward to working with the Ness executive team to identify capabilities that complement our practices to accelerate growth,” said Mahoney. “Ness has a proven proficiency in delivering holistic, mission-critical solutions that integrate customer experience design, platform engineering, and big data analytics. I look forward to helping the company add to the portfolio of expertise it can offer customers.”

Mahoney will be based out of Ness’ headquarters in Teaneck, NJ, and he will report directly to Lombardo.

About Ness Digital Engineering

Ness Digital Engineering designs and builds digital platforms and software that help organizations engage customers, differentiate their brands, and drive revenue growth. Our customer experience designers, software engineers and data experts partner with clients to develop roadmaps that identify ongoing opportunities to increase the value of their digital products and services. Through agile development of minimum viable products (MVPs), our clients can test new ideas in the market and continually adapt to changing business conditions—giving our clients the leverage to lead market disruption in their industries and compete more effectively to drive revenue growth. For more information, visit ness.com.

Media Contacts

Vivek Kangath
Senior Global Manager – Corporate Communications
Ness Digital Engineering
Mobile: +91 9742565583 | Tel: +91 80 41961000 | DID: +91 80 41961027

Amy Legere
Greenough
alegere@greenough.biz
617.275.6517

Bimodal IT or Multimodal IT: Challenges of Every Innovative Organization

Bimodal IT is a term coined by Gartner as digital systems started evolving in 2012. Bimodal is a practice whereby organizations manage two separate modes of IT operations, ideally within a coherent work culture. One mode focuses on stability and operational efficiencies, while the other drives agility and innovation. The very thought of bimodal IT is debated, abhorred, and/or loved by a diverse set of practitioners.

Churchill Club in the San Francisco Bay Area assembled CIOs and CTOs from software/hardware product and enterprise settings at a private dinner to share their experiences, along with leading analysts who debated the concept of bimodal IT.

The discussion among 23 individuals around the table was lively, and all of the CIOs and CTOs contributed with their own set of experiences and challenges. My assumption is that, like me, everyone headed home enriched from the discussion.

Enterprise success depends on the ability to drive both top line and bottom line. It is driven by the longevity of various ingredients which allows an organization to stay ahead of its competitors. Essentially, every large organization at a certain size struggles with innovation. How does an organization balance innovation and operational efficiency? This pervasive issue led to the definition and practice involving bimodal or multimodal IT.

The moderator pointed out that any incremental improvement in technology and business is performed in the name of innovation. However, over a period of time when business models have changed dramatically, perspectives about what constitutes innovation has changed as well.

There is not necessarily anything right or wrong about any given approach—rather, it all boils down to the best practices IT leaders and their organizations adhere to, to maximize success within their organizations.

During the discussion, various problems were viewed and analyzed through multiple dimensions. Commonality across a few of those dimensions for bimodal or multimodal IT were human capital (talent), culture, process, and budget (finance).

Human Capital (Talent):

There was consensus that talent is key to any organization’s success. There are different sets of people with different skills and mindsets, and the secret sauce lies in managing these different types of talent. Some of the participating executives talked about how the “two in a box” model worked towards achieving their goals. Others talked about the importance of identifying the right person for the role—be it disruptive innovation or operational efficiencies. Many executives expressed a belief that innovation does emerge from incremental improvement; others opined on the need for disruption of the business model itself.  How they organize talent stems from these beliefs.

The discussion included experience around outside-in talent versus hunting for innovation catalysts within an existing team. Managing talent by hiring from outside or promoting from inside is an issue faced by every innovative organization.

Culture:

The culture of an organization drives its success for the long term. This is one of the biggest challenges upon which everyone in the room agreed. There is no “one size fits all” solution; however, it was interesting to note various observations on how Silicon Valley organizations deal with their challenges. I will highlight some of them without naming the company or executive:

  • Bring the naysayer and the innovator together to create success for the organization. Take care to choose individuals who will benefit from the tension from their disparate points of view.
  • Create a stand-alone team to address certain challenges, and encourage the team to take a three-month break to understand the business and come up with innovative ideas and suggestions leading to concepts and
  • While fostering ideas bottom-up, innovation also needs to be encouraged top-down through various measures. A business model around a showerhead was discussed, illustrating how a model can be flipped on its head to innovate and think differently. In this instance, support for moving ahead came from the CEO.
  • Spin innovation out as a new entity. In some examples from the group, innovative ideas were allowed to spin out as separate entities and grow into multi-billion dollar businesses. It is OK to kill a business model if it does not succeed.
  • It is important to build a sustaining model where any spin-out innovation is brought back into the mainstream business for the organization to reap benefits of such innovation by building capabilities within the mothership.
  • There was partial agreement that disruptive innovation needs physical segregation of human capital to ensure that the thinking and implementation are more lateral than incremental.
  • In terms of both culture and process, it was agreed that most innovation is still incremental.

Process:

How do you play out culture to a process OR drive culture through process? There was significant debate around this issue. Process is one area where both bashers and lovers of bimodal IT had the most varied opinions. While some felt that the team of innovators and operations folks should be together from day one, others felt there was a need for them to be kept separate. I am not sure if there is a proven method which has seen consistent success to be standardized. Each company is unique in its business, culture and process. They are governed by key guidelines for growth in top line and bottom line alike—and approaches to these guiding principles are different. I will highlight a few of the interesting points raised during the conversation:

  • Sparkathon is one of the ways to foster innovation. In the discussion it was bracketed under emerging services. It was driven by the idea of building minimal viable traction (private concept to private beta to public beta to GA) and then leading to folding it into the mothership for concept to commercialization.
  • The two in a box model was adopted to drive incremental improvement through logical progression towards innovation.
  • One of the executives brought up an important point about measuring innovation. Research in an organization is measured with an outcome/expectation. Measuring a balance between an incremental innovation (coming from ops) and someone who flips the entire business model/paradigm is equally important.
  • Organizing principles of innovation/ops efficiency should be driven top-down. It is a cultural mindset and it needs to be implemented as process through different metrics.

Finance:

Money, at the end of the day drives significant behavior in an organization. Most of the executives in the room, including the analysts, agreed that funding plays an important role in how innovation is encouraged. In some cases, bootstrapping drives innovation. In others, acumen and intuition to spend money to drive innovation play into guiding principles that can lead to success. Again, there is no wrong or right approach. Each organization and its leaders apply different metrics/measures/models unique to their environments to be successful. Here are a few that came out in the discussion:

  • Make the innovator and operations teams work together to fuel incremental innovation and showcase savings. These savings can then get pumped into branch-out innovation.
  • Fund any new ideas as startups. Vet them through their business model and feed them with funding only when they meet their milestones.
  • True innovations are not necessarily measurable and it needs to be identified how to create the right balance.
  • One analyst spoke about creating different portfolios to manage different aspects of innovation (be it ops officer, intelligence officer, or CTO) and fund them accordingly to fuel innovation.

PARTING COMMENT:

One attendee, who works with a spectrum of companies from Y Combinator to Fortune 500, had interesting data that he contributed at the close of the group discussion. Most of his clients, who are Global 1000 enterprises outside the Bay Area, foster innovation through startups spun out of their need. However, 80% of these do not return to the mothership, because organizational leaders fear adverse effects on the mothership itself. There are a total of 785 startups which are an output of the drive for innovation by large enterprises that have set up innovation labs (integral or independent) in the Bay Area.

IT Versus the Organization

In a new article for InformationWeek, Paul Lombardo, CEO, Ness Digital Engineering, shares his viewpoints on the importance of IT and business alignment and how IT leaders can align their goals with the larger business objectives.  “More now than ever, technology is central to a company’s ability to compete, so alignment of IT and strategic business objectives is crucial. Therefore, finding the alignment between what may seem like an IT priority and the wider business objectives is vital,” Paul noted.

Read more »

Gearing Up for the Next Generation of Investors – Wealth Management

The wealth management industry is undergoing major transformations with the emergence of digital savvy millennials on the investment scene. This new generation of customers expect more value for the fee they pay, and want more control with real-time, personalized and instant access to information about their wealth, as well as predictive recommendations for the future. As fintechs swiftly take over the scene with innovative service offerings based on data-driven insights, major investment and asset management firms need to respond to the changing investor landscape.

Most major investment and asset management firms recognize that change is needed to effectively reach this new generation of investors. The truth is that they’re not acting as fast as they should. That is often because they don’t know how and is part of the reason why we’re seeing a boom in fintech companies, sprinting towards the digital future with new technology offerings focused on a data centered investment culture that relies much less on personal relationships. In fact, access to personal datasets is now the competitive catalyst for a new set of innovative service offerings, tailored to recent widows or young families who will need digital tools to manage accumulated wealth. This Point of View White Paper is a collaboration between Ness Digital Engineering, a company that designs and develops modern digital platforms for clients, and Moola, a fintech startup company focused on the future of wealth management that is making strides with propositions “tuned to the digital investment and lifestyle needs of the modern investor.”

Read the full whitepaper to learn how technology will make intergenerational wealth transfer more efficient.

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