DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Leadership Suite » Surviving Through the New Normal

tech investments

Surviving Through the New Normal

By: George V. Hulme on May 27, 2020 Leave a Comment

As enterprises move from the first phase of the pandemic to the reopening phase, they’re going to have to determine what tech investments going forward will provide the most value in the their new normal.

Recent Posts By George V. Hulme
  • GitLab Gets an Overhaul
  • IT Spending to Reach $4.4 Trillion in 2022
  • Successful Digital Transformation: It’s About Strategy
More from George V. Hulme
Related Posts
  • Surviving Through the New Normal
  • Why is Security Still in the Way? A Look at DevSecOps Right Now
  • TechStrong Con 2022: Exploring What’s Next in Tech
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • DevOps Culture
  • DevOps Practice
  • Features
  • Leadership Suite
    Related Topics
  • COVID
  • digital transformation
  • economic impact
  • new normal
  • tech investments
  • tech spending
Show more
Show less

Emad Georgy, founder and CTO at consulting firm Georgy Technology Leadership, said that while overall tech spending will remain down, that pain won’t be evenly distributed. Georgy claimed that investments will continue to remain high in the obvious industries, of course, such as healthcare, retail and grocery chains.

DevOps Connect:DevSecOps @ RSAC 2022

“However, multiple adjacent and dependent businesses investments will also remain high. Suppliers of materials required by these industries, companies involved in their supply chain, companies supporting remote collaboration tools will continue to thrive,” said Georgy.

Coming off the heels of the economic shutdown, Alex Milowski, platforms researcher and evangelist at database management software provider Redis Labs, said that both people and systems have experienced significant disruptions, and this has hurt their productivity and strained technology platforms in some ways, while for other job functions platform and infrastructure are at over capacity.

Milowski said organizations needed to strike a balance between the immediate needs of staff, so that they could adjust to the changes in their work and lives and still access critical work systems while also ensuring that customer needs are also met.

However, now that enterprises are looking forward, how do they ensure that their digital transformation efforts remain in place?

As enterprises get their footing as the new economic reality settles in, Milowski advised organizations to focus on small wins.

“Prioritizing projects where one can increase the confidence of the team to function under uncertainty may be the best strategy. New projects may need to be created to address surges in demand via caching or acceleration systems,” said Milowski. “A team might use this time to address auto-scaling systems so they can scale-down as a cost-saving measure. The increased collaboration and creative problem solving will build team confidence in their ability to deliver. With each win, ensure readiness is improving.”

Within those early successes, teams can then troubleshoot their processes with less disruption to their business.

“As their confidence grows, they can ease into picking more business-critical and complex projects. In the end, they are more likely to succeed, with less disruption, as their team is now ready as they know how to deliver new digital initiatives in very different contexts. Successive small wins turn into big wins,” said Milowski.

Georgy indicated that such uncertain times require a sharp focus and prioritization.

“Financial insecurity often leads to sharpened discipline which one could argue we should have anyway in an organization. Unfortunately, many companies are plagued by ‘management by assumption.’ That is the practice of managing and deciding based on opinions or second-hand knowledge because they don’t have time to [dig into] the weeds,” he said.

It’s time to prove concepts out. Georgy added that it’s more important than ever to make data-driven decisions based on experiential learning.

“Opinions are no longer welcome. Every person at the decision table must justify their decisions with data, with real-world experience and with action,” he said.

That can be done by CIOs as they track their changing customer base.

“Customers are changing how they spend and re-evaluating what is important to them and this will be reflected in roadmaps as well. Now, more than ever, feedback loops, usability groups and touchpoints with customers to understand this changing dynamic is key to evaluate new approaches and priorities in the roadmap,” said Georgy.

John Belden, project execution advisory services practice leader at UpperEdge, stated that now is the opportunity for CIOs to lead in a way that hasn’t been readily possible in more than 20 years.

Belden advised CIOs to:

  • Take the lead: CIOs can win back the seat at the management table that they enjoyed during the Y2K era. By proactively reaching out to work with counterparts in HR, marketing and supply chain, CIOs can shift from order-taker to problem-solver, which will also help in prioritizing projects.
  • Determine an approach to road-mapping: There are likely to be three different strategies to road-mapping and navigating this time:
    1. Reinvent: This approach establishes a clean sheet of paper and takes a more traditional approach. Companies that could never get the cash or attention to build a roadmap, might have this work thrust upon them if corporate boards demand a pandemic risk mitigation plan.
    2. Revise: This would involve the shuffling of the existing portfolio, some reprioritization and confirmation of direction from the various vendor’s strategies.
    3. Accelerate: Some companies may have already charted a course that accounts for assumptions of a new world order. In these cases, it is likely that CIOs will be asked to accelerate to either leap-frog competitors or solidify their competitive position.
  • Transform vendor engagement strategy: The onslaught of vendor marketing initiatives and client targeting strategies could end up being like the wild west with cloud providers bypassing traditional IT channels to market their wares. CIOs need to work proactively with their business counterparts to set the ground rules for engagement and craft a strategy that motivates suppliers to assist clients in developing their own strategies that can be realized quickly and efficiently. Developing a long-term view in managing the short-term downtime will, in the end, pay dividends in executing during this economic downturn.

Short-term survival with an eye on meeting long-term goals is key to survival, and in the months ahead those enterprises that successfully meet that balance will set themselves apart.

Filed Under: Blogs, DevOps Culture, DevOps Practice, Features, Leadership Suite Tagged With: COVID, digital transformation, economic impact, new normal, tech investments, tech spending

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

Now, more than ever, companies who rapidly react to changing market conditions and customer behavior will have a competitive edge.  Innovation-driven response is successful not only when a company has new ideas, but also when the software needed to implement them is delivered quickly. Companies who have weathered recent events ... Read More
« Beyond Begging
Not All Heroes Wear Capes: Celebrating the Tech Community »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Continuous Deployment
Monday, July 11, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT
Using External Tables to Store and Query Data on MinIO With SQL Server 2022
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
Goldilocks and the 3 Levels of Cardinality: Getting it Just Right
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New Normal’
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Moving From Lift-and-Shift to Cloud-Native
June 30, 2022 | Alexander Gallagher
The Two Types of Code Vulnerabilities
June 30, 2022 | Casey Bisson
Common RDS Misconfigurations DevSecOps Teams Should Know
June 29, 2022 | Gad Rosenthal
Quick! Define DevSecOps: Let’s Call it Development Security
June 29, 2022 | Don Macvittie

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery
New call-to-action

Most Read on DevOps.com

What Is User Acceptance Testing and Why Is it so Important?
June 27, 2022 | Ron Stefanski
Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New No...
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Chip-to-Cloud IoT: A Step Toward Web3
June 28, 2022 | Nahla Davies
DevOps Connect: DevSecOps — Building a Modern Cybersecurity ...
June 27, 2022 | Veronica Haggar
The Two Types of Code Vulnerabilities
June 30, 2022 | Casey Bisson

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.