At our recent Q3 Sales Kickoff, we were treated with a surprise session from Theresa Lanowitz, founder of technology industry analyst firm, voke. Regular visitors to our blog may recall an interview we did with Theresa back in February, where we discussed how the “next generation enterprise” is being fueled by “extreme automation.”
What was so cool to see and hear at Theresa’s session was a sneak peak at a soon to be released voke research based on real world survey data that not only validates her advice to those looking to stay ahead in today’s rapidly accelerated software market, they also align with what we at Skytap see and hear in the field every day.
What exactly is the “next generation enterprise?” While Theresa’s definition is simple, those in this industry know all too well that developing it, testing it, and shipping it is not. Theresa defines it as “globally connected and software driven and people want it to work, be easy to use, and seamless.”
I can hear the eyes rolling, thinking, “Boy, that’d be nice.” But the truth of the matter is, if you’re not building software this efficient, and literally this fun to use—the time to learn how is now, because your competition is surely on their way, if not already there.
Theresa explained that one of the ways this highly valuable level of enterprise-grade software is being built is through an equally evolved definition of “virtualization.” There was a time when organizations could say, “Sure, we’re doing virtualization, look at our servers.” But server virtualization isn’t enough. Those on the cutting edge of development asked themselves years ago, “What else can we virtualize?” Theresa explained that from servers, enterprises moved to desktops, labs, and networks—all the way to the entire software virtualization lifecycle being practiced by many today.
What caused this evolution? Was it enterprises simply saying, “We do it because we can?” Hardly. The shift is directly the result of customers’ demands and need for their applications to be delivered faster, faster, oh, and faster. But as Theresa pointed out, faster is not always better, especially when quality suffers. I’d heard Theresa speak to this point before, but when she took us down memory lane to recall the software failures of Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq—the true impact of deficient software quality, really makes you stop to wonder, “How do we achieve higher quality software, and deliver a finished* (it’s never really finished) product faster than ever before?”
So, what’s the secret to this two-pronged measure of success and customer elation? We’re looking forward to getting some answers from voke’s latest research soon, but for now, check out, “Agility in the Cloud: How Dev/Test Teams Can Increase Velocity While Reducing Defects, or take a Skytap Cloud tour today!
