Monday, December 23, 2013

What is a ‘Digital Strategy’? Unlocking the ‘Enterprise Potential’ - Taking a different view with MobileFirst in 2014


Folks,

This has indeed been a busy year, with new product launches, new acquisitions, and new business models seems like every company is trying to reinvent itself and in process claiming innovation, thought leadership and market leadership. To this, I spend sometime in pondering over  what’s next? Does a new mobile app, which is cool, and has generated a buzz and that albeit may extend an existing business process – validate the claim on “innovation”? Or mere product rejuvenation? Will this trend continue in 2014? I would like to share some thoughts on my last post of 2013, thereby, reflecting on 2013 and pondering on what is to come in 2014. I think our conversation ought to be much different in 2014 – especially on Innovation landscape.

I’d like to start with “Digital Strategy” as a conversation starter? Do our clients understand what it is? Do we understand what is a  “Digital Strategy”?  Investment into IT strategy be it in Cloud, Big Data, Business analytics and even enterprise mobile platforms can be construed as Digital Strategy but it is NOT! Let me explain. The new era of business, client interaction and simple transaction, be it selling, commerce, client care will be pervasive, much like how we interaction with our connection in social media (on-line or in person), it is context aware, relevant and pervasive! This means an enterprise strategy that relies on various data points from various sources about the:

a.     person (customer/employee),
b.     Things (inventory, item, UPC) and
c.     Place (Location)

i.e. -->Intelligent, instrumented and Interconnected.

Much like a Smarter Planet campaign launched by IBM about 5 or so year ago.  This type of permeating ‘interaction of systems’ requires an overhaul of the “systems Thinking” from an IT Strategy to a “Digital Strategy”. IT Strategy suggested a model that treated technology in isolation, project based deployment that has evolved into a Services oriented design. Digital Strategy on the other hand focuses on  harnessing all-encompassing amalgamation of individual technologies such as a cloud, big data, Mobile, Business analytics etc, to provides us with a unified and contextual view of an Object (person, things, place). An enterprise should thus “focus their strategy on digital transactions based on automating and substituting physical resources for digital will only feel digital. Such digital substitution strategies create virtual copies of the real world, creating e-channels, e-stores and other e-surrogates for physical processes”1.  How much of this “Digital Strategy” do our client’s capitalize on?  How much of an ‘enterprise potential’ can this unlock for our clients? --- Something to ponder upon!

Now, Mobility/Mobile Application as a medium is most certainly disruptive to the enterprise computing platforms, as it imposes several technical challenges (such as scalability, security and new computing models) which can be expensive and time consuming to be meaningful, but Mobility/Mobile application also provides organizations, small and large alike, to exploit the possibilities presented by this new digital model with relative speed – this is possible due to community defined standards (Frameworks, standards etc), data source in public domain (social media) and shifting the computing (processing)focus ( and data entry) to the end consumer. So this is fundamental shift in consumer driven computing, processing (and data) model.  I think this trend will continue to dominate in 2014 and beyond and we simply need to understand and find avenues to adapt and exploit this shift as it related to an enterprise digital strategy.

I would also like to touch upon how these digital touch point’s fare in Mobility/Mobile Application paradigm. To this I would like to broadly classify touch points as follows. ( Please note this is broad category to explain the digitization not ONLY Mobility):

1.        User Specific data (Instrumented) – This includes all user specific data including user profile, preferences, user data owned (co-owned) by user in social media (public and private). This can be B2C or B2E depending on the context.

2.        Security (Intelligent) – This related to context and risk based access, user credentials, shared security domain and trusts (OAuth/SAML etc).

3.        Location specific data (Instrumented) – This relates to Location i.e. place specific data includes GPS coordinates, Cartesian coordinates, and in-building location via access points. This also include the location of transaction i.e. place of transaction execution, range, geo fencing etc.

4.        Enterprise Messaging (Interconnected) – This include bi-directional communication with users, things and places.  Messaging also include receiving messages from sensors, events, users and their devices.


5.        Enterprise Intelligence (Intelligent) – Enterprise intelligence refers to our digital strategy discussion. The ability for an enterprise to collectively harness, Analyze and digitize the invest into physical assets, IT systems and People.

Technically Speaking:

I. Mobile Security:  I think Mobile Security will be part of every true enterprise mobile conversation. With security breach at “Target Stores” during peak holidays season followed by media coverage has brought security into focus, and I think Mobile security should be on every CIO/CMO’s radar.  So I suggest we better understand the Mobile security landscape to better prepare for 2014




Broadly speaking we categorize Mobile security into 3 aspects:

1. Security (App and data) on Device: This includes everything on the device including (but not limited to):

a. B2E (in some cases B2B) -- MDM -- Device management such as a Device signature/device registration (trusted)/Jailbreak detection etc.
b. B2C - Application tampering/Malware related exploits/data on the device etc

Broad range of solution to address many of these facets:
(i) Containerization – Aim to address separation of work and play, secure containers or protected sandbox for secure and trusted (signed) application/data and resulting traffic security.

(ii) Securing the application -- Malware injection/tampering/Application auth tests/Data exfilteration -- AIM to make sure that the app and related data is secure. 

(iii) Securing the data on the device and prevent leakage --- goes back to on device data encryption, transport encryption (enforced by enterprise security), access control etc.

2. Security (Data) in Transit/ Transport

This is to ensure that data is securely transported AES/SSL/TLS -- mostly enforced by protocol over public network and enforcement is burden of the enterprise -- Tools such as a ISAM for Mobile (with integration with SIEM for reporting), Datapower - for AAA etc, Edge and reverse proxies etc.

Now this has been business as usual we now begin to see Mobile and context awareness requirements in the edge and a more intelligent ways to provide access control (OTP/MOTP etc)

3. Security (Data) in Enterprise:

This is also business as usual for many enterprises with securing enterprise application/services and data and access to it. Things like AAA, trust interceptors and role based enterprise security access with PAP/PDP/PEP concepts at play. Here also we now begin to see Mobile and context awareness requirements.



Reference:




Thoughts on 2014:

Let us focus on conversation and design around Enterprise “Digital Strategy” which is pervasive and all encompassing. Mobility will certainly dominate “Digital Strategy” discussion, and mobility is not just Mobile application but includes M2M (Machine to Machine), sensor data and implicit interaction between systems that needs to be captures and analyzed. Above all I believe 2014 will kick off a new era in Digital Evolution – and we all have a tremendous opportunity to contribute and lead.

As Always I welcome critique and thoughts.

Have a Great Holiday Season, Merry Christmas and Happy New year – 2014!

:)
Nitin

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