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Engineering and technology organizations have come up with a set of best practices for developing and deploying cloud-native applications during the past decade. Observable systems, continuous delivery, and containerization are examples of these best practices.

At the same time, cloud-native organizations are dramatically changing how they're organized, turning large departments into independent teams (development, QA, operations, release are examples). To support these teams, two key new functions have been emerged: site reliability engineering and platform engineering. The software engineering discipline is being applied in different aspects of operations by SRE and platform engineering, which are the spiritual successors to traditional operations teams.

The rise of microservices, container orchestration, and other challenges have created new engineering challenges. Recent developments in cloud providers, containers, and infrastructure as code have opened up many superpowers for organizations, such as service discovery and simplified horizontal scaling. Several organizations have formed platform engineering teams to handle these tasks.

At Sonata, we leverage our unique method -  Platformation^TM - to build open, connected, scalable, and intelligent platforms while ensuring that all the aspects of your business form the core of your digital transformation journey.

Platformation^TM enables interaction among organizations, customers, and ecosystem actors, thereby unlocking value. This allows for a quick response to changing client expectations via innovative service/product offerings that add value to all stakeholders. Platformation enables the orchestration of the digital ecosystem as well as the execution of digital business activities by combining platform features.

Platforms, we believe, are much more than just stacks of technical layers. Building a strong digital platform necessitates the integration of several technology platforms from the information systems, data & analytics, IoT, ecosystem, and customer experience domains.

The following capabilities and functionalities are embodied and delivered by digital platforms designed using the Platformation^TM framework:

• The technical environment, application development approach, and IT operations model all work as one system.
• Stacks are integrated with the cloud to common standards in a highly secure environment with auto-scaling.
• Applications are built as micro-services with multi-device and channel reach capabilities, as well as Big Data, AI, IoT, and telemetry-enabled functions, enabling intelligent contextual transactions that can be easily integrated and orchestrated inside this standard framework.
• For quick, flexible feature releases, operations options include full automation with continuous development, integration, and deployment capabilities.
• To analyze, control, and optimize system performance, built-in operations analytics that aid platform self-learning are used.

What is platform engineering?

Platform engineering is the process by which companies adopt and leverage new technology and platforms to transform their cloud platforms. If you look at the reasons behind the underlying success of these born-digital players, they can imagine their business on a platform business model. 

A platform business model is a radical shift from the traditional pipe business model, where the operation was linear. Here, the platform business engages the larger ecosystem of the customer, partners, and suppliers and can leverage the underlying value of data through digital technologies.

Developers can simplify the process of delivering software to users with the help of platform engineers. There are many ways to accomplish this. A few examples of these ways are standardizing an organization's Kubernetes deployments, ensuring infrastructure is auditable, automating various deployment processes, and writing documentation for application developers.

Platform engineering should not be confused with DevOps. While they are similar in some ways, they differ in others. When a team in an organization wanted to host a new website, it was necessary to coordinate with the DevOps team. Platform engineers develop systems that teams can build upon. As an example, if the same team had a platform that was responsible for hosting the website, no coordination would be necessary between this team and the platform engineering team.

Creating a platform engineering team is one way for a company to start updating its engineering culture. The aforementioned changes, such as cloud vendor popularity and the shift to a microservice design, make building a platform engineering team even more appealing. However, there are alternative ways to modernize engineering culture. 

Watch out for this space for more updates. Worried about your digital transformation journey? Reach out to us today and, we will show you the way forward.
 

In a world undergoing massive digital transformation, managed services have become increasingly critical as a way for companies to focus on what is important to them. The global Managed Services market size is projected to reach USD 350 Billion by 2026, from USD 242 Billion in 2021, at a CAGR of 7.9% during 2021-2026. The scarcity of skilled IT resources, as well as cost reduction and lower IT budgets, are driving the expansion of the managed services market. The COVID-19 pandemic has also increased demand for secure IT infrastructure to enable remote work and increased requirements for regulatory compliance.

The rise of Managed Services

Managed Services originated with the evolution of Application Services Providers in the 1990s, where software companies made applications available via the internet. Since then, with the advancement of technology, more and more services have been taken over by third parties, evolving into the Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and now, into Everything as a Service (XaaS) models.

The benefits of Managed Services are obvious.

• Security - 
  Computer security has become something out of Alice through the looking glass. In that novel, the Red Queen tells Alice, “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place.” It’s the same situation with cybersecurity. With 2 new vulnerabilities being discovered every hour, it becomes increasingly inefficient to have an in-house cybersecurity team to manage the company’s networks and operating systems, and software for vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
   
• Core Focus -
  For non-IT organizations, information technology is an enabler, a provider of insights and while technology is redefining business ecosystems across the board, the maintenance of the technology infrastructure is a non-core, support activity. And given the increasing level of complexity and mindshare that maintenance, up-gradation, and management of tech infrastructure takes up, it makes sense for companies to leave these activities to a managed services partner, leaving them free to concentrate on the core activities of their business.
   
• Outsourced Expertise -
  In the pandemic/post-pandemic world, where digital transformation is the priority of every organization – whether it’s the mom-and-pop store at the corner or the multinational conglomerate with a finger in every corporate pie, people with the necessary sysadmin/DevOps skills command huge premiums. The process of staffing IT infrastructure has become both cumbersome and competitive. Expertise is sought across the board, and it makes business sense for organizations to outsource this activity – to leave it to the professionals.
   
• Scalability -
  With organizations making the move to the cloud, optimization of infrastructure can lead to significant benefits. The ability to quickly scale up to spikes in activity, as well as scale down during quiet periods, becomes easier with cloud-based infrastructure. In this context, having a managed service provider manage scalability requirements allows businesses to insulate themselves from costly decisions on hardware acquisition. And in addition, managed services providers can also bring greater expertise to bear on problems as and when they appear.

Why Sonata?

Sonata has been providing Managed Services to some of India’s biggest corporations. Our services have helped major global corporations handle their infrastructure, manage their backup and recovery operations, protect against disasters, secure their systems, and identify cost-savings across their IT infrastructures.

To find out more, reach out to us today!

Digital technologies are driving the paradigm shift in the commodity market. Adoption of Intelligent platforms in commodity sourcing has been growing since the last decade. 

Manufacturers and traders are increasingly adopting modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Blockchain to have better control over the volatile commodity markets

Digitization in the commodity world is reshaping how commodities are procured with optimal use of present-day technologies, thus increasing productivity.

Technology Adoption and Market Drivers:

Cost reduction has always been the prime objective of procurement organizations. Other major concern of the Commodity trading and manufacturing organizations is to mitigate the risks of the volatile market conditions. Today the Social Mobile Analytic Cloud (SMAC) concept has been extended to commodity industry as well and is driving innovation and efficiency.

Contrary to the Forwards market, the Futures market is designed for the win-win situation for both the Producers and Procurement organizations. Today, the world has many Commodity exchanges to regulate and bring efficiency into this market. There are still many challenges to be addressed due to the varying conditions of the commodity market like logistical barriers and climate change which are demanding visibility on the value chains and for this purpose, organizations are leveraging advanced technologies.

One such example: Recently Coffee board of India deployed a blockchain-based coffee trading app to connect coffee growers with various players on the Market. This welcoming move has not only established visibility for the coffee market, but has also been successful in maintaining fair pricing for coffee growers of remote hillyregions in India.

With the help of Big Data Analytics, better control over pricing can be achieved through predictive modelling. 

Social media has made it easier for suppliers, traders, and producers to stay connected. Robotic Process Automation is making cross-functional operations seamless and helping in digitizing supply chain processes.

Sustainable Sourcing is becoming a new normal as some of the FMCG giants are deepening their focus into fair trade and Responsible sourcing. This resulted in a demand for state-of-the-art supplier Auditing Systems.

Role of CTRM systems in Commodity Procurement and Trading:

Modern Commodity Trading and Risk Management systems utilise advanced technologies and act as One-Stop Digital Platforms to manage complex supply chains. This inclusion of modern technologies gives them an advantage over legacy commodity systems. Modern day CTRM systems not only help in staying updated with the evolving regulatory environment, they also cater to the specific needs of each commodity category like Hard, Soft and Energy. Energy CTRM systems are also termed as ETRM systems. CTRM systems provide better traceability of the transactions and insightson market price fluctuations.

Benefits of ERP Integrated CTRM systems:

ERP systems provide integrated insights into various functions like finance and supply chain. Having the CTRM system integrated with the ERP gives direct visibility on the contracts and supply chain thus helps in better decision making. Commodity Lifecycle Management becomes hassle free when the CTRM systems are integrated with ERP. Greater visibility on P&L can be achieved through this practice.

Sonata’s unique Digital CTRM Platform:

Sonata’s Digital CTRM Platform is built on top of the future ready Dynamics 365 Platform and provides a strong, rigorous yet flexible solution to traders and manufacturers managing complex commodity supply chains. Visit our offering Page to know more:

The unprecedented situation we find ourselves in with the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing us all to look at how we can continue to provide the services that we need for day to day business to continue and how we work as individuals. In many ways Agriculture is a ‘traditional’ industry with many business relationships still built on person to person contact. With the exception of Field Agents, the majority of staff work from an office, but the general lockdown imposed now in many countries and states does not make this either feasible or safe. Adding to the issues for the Agri industry is the fact that we are moving towards the build-up to Harvest when such a high percentage of business is performed.

Businesses, such as Amazon, are still able to operate in the current environment because they are Platform based businesses. Their method of operation is not going to change in the current situation. Many organizations are now having to accelerate or even put in place, their plans to extend their digital platforms to allow them to continue to work effectively in the current climate. Consider the following in relation to your organization:

• How do I allow my staff to work from home, provide access to the systems they need and know that our systems are still secure?
• How do we secure our supply of grain/cereals for this year from our growers?
• How can we monitor the quality of the crops in the field and assess the quality and volume of the crop available to sell?
• How do ensure orders and deliveries of crop protection products and other items?
• How can we give visibility of contracts, deliveries, analysis results, invoices, payments to our growers and customers?

These are probably just a few of the questions that you are considering. The above are a combination of what you need for your business and what your suppliers/customers need from you.

Consider using digital versions of documents with digital signatures for those that are legally binding e.g. contract.

It is human nature to look for someone else to provide information for you; how much of your staff’s time is taken up with simple questions around delivery or uplift of goods, payment of invoices etc? Why not look to provide that information on an outward-facing portal? You can provide the information required and it is available 24 hours a day not just during office hours; look on it as an extension to customer service!

The good news is that these and many others can be addressed and in a timely manner.

Yes, you may have to bring forward parts of your overall plan but these will allow you not only to survive this current situation but will leave you with stronger and more advanced methods of working when we come out from Covid-19.

We can help you ………

Over the last decade, Cloud has undoubtedly been the biggest game changer on the technology front, coupled with the explosion in data and devices. Whether it is IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, Open Source on Cloud, or even allied areas such as Analytics and Mobility, the pace of adoption has been incredible.

Increasingly, we find that businesses no longer just view technology as an expense, but as an investment that can help them differentiate and stay ahead of competition. We see business owners being an integral part of the decision making, along with the CIO’s office.

Also, we find that customers no longer come asking for specific products; rather they simply seek solutions to address their business challenges. In line with this, our approach has evolved too. We take a solution-centric approach rather than focusing on individual products.

Aligning for Digital Transformation

At Sonata, we’ve positively embraced the advent of Cloud, with a deep commitment to be leaders there as well. We’ve made deep investments in people - in terms of reskilling and adding new skillsets; processes - including new templates and tools; and assets - such as Centre of Excellence etc. We’ve developed our own platform IP solutions for Digital Transformation in focused industries like Retail, Distribution and Travel which we are taking to the market.

We’ve worked closely with our partners such as Microsoft to build mindshare for platform based solutions. In India, we’ve been selected as the Country Partner of the year for Microsoft in 3 of the last four years.

With all these, we’ve transformed ourselves as a Digital Capable Partner.

Addressing Adoption Challenges
While leaders increasingly understand the transformative power of technology, there are still certain factors that affect adoption:

• Inherent Resistance to Change
When change is driven by the leadership, getting end users toadopt and appreciate new technologies and understand their impact on their lives is often the biggest roadblock; because people are inherently tuned to resist change.

• Limited Knowledge
Given the plethora of new technologies, businesses have a limited understanding of what works best for their organization; and they lack skilled manpower to deploy them, which are major challenges. The absence of relevant real-life use cases, especially for new technologies, also inhibits adoption.

• Risk Perception
Customers are conscious of specific risks when going Cloud and Digital – data security, interoperability, user adoptions and fear of loss of control of data and systems; which can make them wary. But it is important to understand the business benefits and imperative to go digital for customers to remain competitive.

At Sonata, our focus has been on easing our customers’ digital journey and helping them make the transition. We’re helping our customers adoption challenges through the following:

• Centres of Excellence and Proof of Concept for key technologies with a range of demos to overcome these challenges. We are also handholding the customers at every stage of new technology adoptions with our services team.
• Invest adequate effort in hand holding the customer, helping to educate and build awareness among end users, and support adoption effectively. A clear migration path and assurance on support at every stage of the process becomes important. A clear ROI case is also needed to convince other business stakeholders, such as CXOs.
• Our managed services offerings help customers gain from our deep expertise, such that they are able to run their applications smoothly, without the need to invest in an extensive IT team. We’ve also been working closely with Microsoft on trials, building PoCs and Centers of Excellence to explore product applications and use cases.

We’re thrilled to be at the forefront of driving digital transformation for our customers – helping them make the leap to the next generation of technology; enabling them to use technology in the most effective manner to further their business objectives.

More than ever, organizations are waking up to the importance of having a robust disaster recovery system in place to protect data, applications and servers in the event of unfortunate occurrences such as power outages, technical glitches and natural calamities.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of securing your data with an effective disaster recovery roadmap that can minimize threats and restore operations immediately. Clubbing a disaster recovery system with your business continuity plan prepares you to deal with disasters, respond to unexpected situations, and implement steps to ensure that all business functions are restored to normalcy.

Sonata’s new DR as a Service (DRaaS) solution is meant to address this very need. Our DRaaS is powered by Azure Site Recovery and promises to be a cost-effective solution that keeps your business running.

DRaaS by Sonata

Our DRaaS solution has been designed with an eye on solving some of the biggest issues that our customers have raised. Here are some key features:

• Simplified Business Continuity
  : Any disruption in business means a corresponding loss in revenue. Therefore, our near-synchronous replication solution is designed to get you back in business quickly, with near-zero data loss, in the event of a disaster.
• Managing complexity:
  Disaster recovery is simplified significantly with features such as customizable recovery plans, health monitoring, and orchestrated recovery capabilities.
• Manage DR Operations:
  While we cannot overstate the need for a solid Disaster Recovery solution, we understand that it takes time and resources away from running your core business. That’s why Sonata manages your DR end to end – from setting up DR Plans to performing drills to monitoring your instances.
• Reporting and Governance:
  With our Governance Reports, we help you stay compliant with Industry Standards

DRaaS Plans

Having worked with 100+ customers in their Cloud Journey, we understand you have different needs and budgets. Accordingly, we have crafted 3 plans as part of our Offering:

Services

Basic

Professional

Premium

Storage Account Type

Standard-LRS

Standard-LRS

Standard-LRS

Storage Size

350 GB/Node

500 GB/Node

750GB/Node

Recovery Point Retention Period

6 hours

12 hours

24 hours

App Consistent Snapshot Frequency

180 mins

120 mins

60 mins

Azure Failover Hours*

240 hours

240 hours

480 hours

Recovery Point Objective

10 mins

5 mins

1 mins

Recovery Time Objective**

120 mins

90 mins

60 mins

Monitoring

-

Yes

Yes

Test Failover

Annually

Half-Yearly

Quarterly

Support Window

9x5

16x5

24x7

 

INR 9,750/-

($150)

/Node/Month

INR 19,500/-

($300)

/Node/Month

INR 39,500/-

($600)

/Node/Month

One Time Assessment Setup starting INR 50,000/-

Introductory Offer

Like with all new offerings, the best time to start is NOW! For the first 10 customers, we shall offer a complimentary Assessment and Setup Services! So, hurry!

Want to know more about Sonata’s new Rapid DR offering? Visit us on DRaaS or write in at Sonata_MSCSP@sonata-software.com to schedule a call.

For the past decade, cloud has been one of the dominant technology trends across the globe. With its many obvious advantages such as the ability to convert infrastructure costs from Capex to Opex, greater flexibility and scalability, businesses across the globe have embraced the cloud. The demand for cloud continues to grow. Gartner has predicted that the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18 percent in 2017 to reach a total of $246.8 billion.

The India story, however, has been slightly different. Despite the buzz, the actual on-ground adoption has been quite slow for a number of reasons. As per Gartner, the public cloud services market in India is projected to grow to just $1.81 billion in 2017.

While actual numbers continue to be small, it still represents a growth of 38 percent in 2017. These rapid growth numbers do indicate that the tide is indeed turning for cloud adoption in India. Over the next few years, we can definitely expect cloud adoption to become increasingly mainstream.

Here are the primary drivers that will push cloud adoption in India:

Data Safety and Regulations

An important deterrent to cloud adoption in India has been concerns around the safety of sensitive data. The fact that most cloud providers didn’t have India-based data centers further exacerbated this trend. For sectors such as Financial Services, there were several regulatory constraints that prevented them from adopting cloud-based technologies if the data was not hosted within India.

Thankfully, this has changed. In 2015, Microsoft brought online three cloud data centers in India to improve performance of Azure services for customers in the country. Last year, Amazon too announced its first Indian AWS data center launch in Mumbai.

Government embracing Cloud

With the India data centers in place, the public sector has started embracing cloud. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has empanelled a set of Cloud Services providers, who can now be leveraged by other Government Departments/Agencies. With such an empanelment done, the hesitation that most Government agencies had on adopting Cloud earlier; has now been addressed.

New Platforms for a Digital Future

Cloud Services Providers are innovating a great deal, and a number of these technologies (Machine Learning, IOT, Advanced Analytics, Cognitive Services) are delivered through the Cloud. Many ISVs, including Sonata, are building their platforms on top of these services, which in turn is leading to greater Cloud adoption.

Increasing Acceptability of Cloud – Shifting Inertia

The initial Inertia preventing most companies from adopting Cloud has been greatly overcome over the last 4 years. Like all technology products, majority of companies started moving only after early adopters had already accepted Cloud. From 2012-2015, there were quite a few who had initiated moving their Low Business Impact applications to the Cloud. By 2015 these companies had moved quite a few Medium Business Impact applications to the cloud as well. Microsoft also contributed a great deal by being the first Public Cloud Services Provider to set up datacenters in India. With strong customer references in place, a number of companies started adopting Cloud, thereby realising the benefits of Cloud. The growth of the Cloud Services market has been in high triple digits for last 5 years in a row.

A Robust Start up Ecosystem

With a large number of start-ups in India, Cloud is the first stop for their IT Infrastructure requirements, considering zero capex and immense scalability potential.

Internet Connectivity

Given that the Internet is the biggest enabler for cloud computing, India’s abysmal Internet infrastructure – both from an availability and speed point of view - has been a big deterrent. As per a recent report on 4G/LTE performance by Open Signal, 4G speeds in India are terribly low in comparison to global standards, with an average download speed of just 5.14 Mbps on a 4G internet connection.

But by all accounts, this is set to change. As per the recent State of the Internet Connectivity report for Q1 2017 by Akamai Technologies, India’s average Internet connection grew 87 percent year-on-year. Also, with competitive new data offerings, programs such as Digital India and the launch of new GSATs by ISRO that promise to boost Internet speeds, Internet in India is set to get faster than ever. This rapid growth in Internet speeds will, in turn, boost cloud adoption in India.

With these in place, we can definitely expect to see the golden age of cloud adoption in India very soon! If you’d like to explore the benefits of cloud for your business, write in to us at mohan.m@sonata-software.com, we’d love to discuss your requirements.

As organizations reel under increasing margin pressures, the focus is now on looking inward for improving efficiency and driving down costs. It's a game that spells Cost Optimization and ROI Maximization across the board – support functions included. Also with C-level executives aligning their business goals and collaborating across functional departments, the internal IT team, especially in mature businesses is now no longer viewed as a traditional support function working in a silo. Rather, it is now in a position to determine the ROI on its IT assets, and plays an instrumental role in problem solving, working closely with the business teams and enabling them to perform better. It establishes processes and systems that help not only provide improved analytics in decision-making, but also in improving agility and pushing the needle in cutting costs, response time and Time to Value (TtV), to name a few.

For IT teams to evolve to this level, measures that enhance both efficiency and effectiveness in controlling software assets act as catalysts.

Effciency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.

- Peter Drucker

Besides this, IT teams must periodically assess the enterprise-wide software requirements, have full visibility over the entire software estate, be aware of their currently entitled software licenses, and maintain records of all publisher licensing agreements and their terms of usage. Overlooking any of these can invite several consequences – ranging from software sprawl, carrying unwanted costs and inefficiencies, publisher audits, to even litigations arising from compliance breaches. That’s a situation you wouldn’t want to be in.

So here are 8 best practices that can save your software estate with its assets from becoming a white elephant:

1. Recognize your top publishers in terms of exposure & risk :
With tools that provide visibility over your software estate, you should easily be able to identify the top applications and scrutinize their license agreements for staying compliant.

2. Identify your software utilization & entitlements :
Again, using tools that give insights into the extent of utilization of each software can help you judge the need for their renewal. Knowing the existing entitlements allows you to extract maximum value from them while steering clear of any compliance issues.

3. Create an effective license position :
Having knowledge about the exact user-level requirements in the enterprise, the existing utilization of applications, and the current licensing agreements, will help you stay compliant and prepare you to engage fruitfully with software vendors.

4. Establish your software requirements :
Periodically accessing the business needs in the enterprise will help you ascertain the usefulness of existing applications and arrive at decisions of retiring them or adding new capabilities easily.

5. Optimize your software utilization and spends :
By establishing your software requirements and knowing which applications are underutilized or utilized adequately, you can know which and how many licenses need renewing, or retiring. This helps in optimizing costs and improving efficiency. Through this exercise,you would also be able to determine the cost of the licensing component of your next IT budget.

6. Manage software estates through process & procedures :
By empowering your IT team with effective tools, you can now manage your software estate across hundreds or thousands of users across geographies simply by putting in place processes and procedures that save you bandwidth.

7. Understand the product usage rights and limitations :
Being aware of the application usage rights and limitations if any, helps in maximizing value through its effective usage and accessing the need for any upgrades, while staying compliant.

8. Understand the Contracts :
Being aware of the risks in contract and being prepared to mitigate the risk. Being aware of the end dates of the contracts, such that, renewal dates of the contract are not missed.

According to a July 2016 study conducted by Gartner, organizations can cut software costs by 30% just by optimizing software configurations, recycling software licenses, and using Software Application Management (SAM) tools.

Source: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3382317

2017 saw technologies like IoT, Machine Learning, Cloud and Big Data Analytics take center stage. While these will continue to make big strides, we will see bar being raised even higher in 2018 in terms of technology adoption. Let’s take a look at the top five technology trends that you will be hearing a lot about this year.

1. Platforming the enterprise

In 2018, we will see enterprises embrace common IT platforms, so they can respond quicker to market changes, be more productive and make better-informed decisions. Platforms that are rich in analytics, follow the information flow of the business and are simple enough that users can constantly change the business without investing too much time or effort. Additionally, they add operational scale quickly to traditionally custom-built enterprise IT.

Common platforms like Amazon, Microsoft and Google empower companies to focus on their applications and user experience, over infrastructure management. Platform-based enterprises also free up both human and working capital, which can then be redirected towards differentiated services, giving them a leg up on the competition, leading to better outcomes for stakeholders.

2. Intelligent everything

If Artificial Intelligence became a buzzword in 2017, then 2018 will be the year when it goes mainstream. The enterprise’s ability to tap into AI for aiding enhanced decision making, reinventing existing business models and ecosystems, and elevating the customer experience, will drive the payoff for digital initiatives. As per a recent survey from Gartner, 59% of organizations are still in the process of gathering information to build their AI strategies, while the rest have already made some headway in piloting or adopting AI solutions.

We’re also moving towards the trend of Narrow AI, which comprises highly scoped machine-learning solutions that are meant to target a specific task (such as understanding language or driving a vehicle in a controlled environment) with algorithms chosen that are optimized for that task. Soon, every app, application and service will incorporate AI at some level. In many familiar application categories, we will see AI running quietly in the background. We can also expect several entirely new applications.

3. Blockchain

Blockchain has primarily been associated with Bitcoin so far but holds promise to change other industries. It can potentially be used in government, healthcare, content distribution, supply chain and more. Blockchain is a shared, distributed, tokenized and decentralized ledger that is independent of individual applications or participants, therefore enabling unknown parties to exchange commercial transactions.

Other potential areas where Blockchain has already showed potential are - trading of agricultural commodities, developing medical record systems, tracking the movement of prescription drugs, eliminating the risk of fraud in real estate transactions, and even helping revolutionize how musicians monetize their work. The immediate use case that holds immense potential is the combination of IoT with blockchain —or BIoT, which seems to be the answer to the security issues around IoT devices that are otherwise, easily hacked.

4. Immersive experience

The recent success of the game Pokemon Go brought into strong focus the potential that augmented reality solutions have for business applications. Immersive experience technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality are already changing the way in which people interact with the digital world. Imagine a world in which field service workers will be able to use an augmented reality (AR) headset to provide visual overlays of complex instructions over their work on physical structures.

These technologies will evolve from pilot projects with modest growth to sustainable business models, market maturity and global availability. Gartner estimates in the next decade, head-worn devices — across all form factors — will generate $72 billion in device revenue alone.

5. Cyber resilience

Even as data is taking centre stage as a hugely beneficial resource for enterprises, the risk of that data getting into the hands of cyber criminals has risen multi fold. Companies which had followed the model of trying to prevent cyber-attacks, are changing their view to perceive cyber security as a continuum. This means continuous evaluation and improvement of risk posture as cyberattacks will happen – so the focus will now be on planning and even practicing for such eventualities.

I am personally excited by the immense potential that these technologies hold for solving problems, bringing new solutions to old issues and opening up possibilities that didn’t exist earlier. Are you convinced that these will be the trailblazers in 2018 or have radically different thoughts? We would love to hear your comments.

All in all, an exciting year ahead!

While the adage ‘old is gold’ may be true in many scenarios, it does not apply to your enterprise technology stack. Software, unfortunately, does not get better with age. As your business evolves, you may often find your legacy technology infrastructure holding you back from your growth aspirations. On one hand, your needs evolve with time; but equally important, legacy technology loses its usefulness as the ecosystem around it evolves.

Gartner says that enterprises should start implementing digital transformation projects in 2018 or risk falling behind their competition.

Impact of Legacy System on Business

Many times, the decision to replace legacy systems is not an easy one to make. This is especially true when you run critical business processes on your existing technology infrastructure. The fear of the unknown can seem daunting. But while the reluctance is understandable, the fact is that an out-dated technology stack can negatively impact company growth and severely impede any digital transformation efforts. There are several concerns:

• Maintenance and Lack of support:
Companies using outdated systems regardless of age or quality of the underlying technology not just struggle to cope with the latest businesses processes but also end up spending a lot of money on running and maintaining the out-dated technology stack. Due to its monolithic nature, any change or update in legacy system requires time and effort and its underlying architecture becomes more expensive to maintain at it ages. Besides, support from vendors becomes a challenge.

• Rigid and difficult to organise:
Unlike modern cloud-based solutions, legacy systems can be to reorganize as they are spread across several databases and storage resources; making storage space optimization difficult.

• IT Talent :
Finding the right talent with the specific skillsets and expertise to maintain your legacy system can be tough; making support and maintenance more expensive.

• Compliance and Security :
Outdated software systems limit a company’s compliance and integration levels. Also, legacy systems are usually less resistant to cyber-attacks.

But perhaps the most important drawback is that it puts severe limitations on the company’s ability to explore new avenues for growth. As this article in the Financial Times states, “It is a paradox that many companies, whose boards would prefer their businesses to be causing disruption with digital platforms, face disruption because of unwieldy and ageing platforms.”

Ready for a Digital Transformation?

Moving to a modern, cloud-based digital platform can unlock limitless possibilities, providing greater scope for innovations and bringing opportunities to outperform competitors, and improve market share. All around us, there are examples of companies that have embraced change and benefited from greater efficiencies, shorter innovation and product development cycles, and reduced the time to market.

If discarding your existing technology infrastructure seems too daunting or is not possible due to any reason, then it makes sense on bridging the technology gap by making existing data accessible via robust and secure APIs.

But to achieve a digital transformation, the best way forward is to adopt a platform-based approach that connects customers, vendors and partners, enabling customers to interact and transact seamlessly. Moving to a platform approach can create immense value for the ecosystem.

A platform - based model provides enterprises with four key benefits – flexibility, scalability, mobility and availability through collaboration of diverse participants.

Based on your unique needs and budgets, you might decide to either invest in a pre-built platform that is ready-to-go or a proprietary customized platform. Either way, the benefits will be there for all to see.

To know more about how platforms bring about a digital business revolution, click on the link below: https://www.sonata-software.com/blog/corporate/cracking-digital-code