Preparing for the Next Wave of Transformation

We’re lucky to work with so many innovative and forward-thinking companies here at SUSE. We see how committed our customers are to tackling their transformation challenges by leveraging open source tools and platforms that allow their developers to quickly build new solutions that drive their organization forward.

The nature of the beast, however, is that transformation is now a continuous program. Both business and IT leaders know that today’s cutting-edge capabilities will quickly be the minimum entry price for tomorrow’s marketplaces. Some of these capabilities now include:

• Cloud native platforms: By 2025, Gartner estimates that over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from just 30% in 2021.
• Edge deployment: Over the next two years, organizations will increase their investments at the edge by an average of 37%, according to a recent IDC survey.
• Containerised applications in production: By 2026, more than 90% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production, an increase from less than 40% in 2022, according to Gartner.

When engaging with and hearing from our customers, the above statistics aren’t surprising because they know how crucial cloud native edge deployment and containerized applications are to their new digital ecosystem. The question is: if most companies are on the journey towards adopting these capabilities, how can a competitive advantage be created?

The answer lies in speed and efficiency, meaning that customers are prioritizing solutions that deliver new innovations at a faster pace while consuming fewer resources. At this juncture, development teams are already likely stretched to the limit with current resources, which makes it challenging to move any faster.

For your development teams to successfully deliver the next wave of transformation, they need tools that enable them to focus on the value-added tasks that fuel innovation. As a result, orchestration and automation are fast becoming essential capabilities for these teams.

Pulling the strings

With Kubernetes now acting as the default language of hybrid multi-cloud, development and IT teams now need the ability to manage this complex ecosystem for delivering:

• Consistent reliability on any infrastructure
• Faster and more efficient DevOps with standardized automation
• Enforcing security policies on any infrastructure

Unfortunately, we still speak to many of these teams who lack the visibility and consistency to manage their Kubernetes clusters independently. If we’re asking these teams to be the engine of growth and innovation, these intentions need to be matched with investments in next-gen tools with automation and orchestration at the core of functionality.

The ROI of orchestration platforms extends beyond simply being able to run your DevOps program more efficiently. With skills and talent shortages set to continue, technology specialists will be looking for those organizations that are walking the talk by delivering the best available tools and platforms.

No matter where the next wave of transformation takes your business, it will ultimately be your people that enable you to stay one step ahead of your competitors. Rather than asking development and IT teams to do more with less, future-focused organizations will instead be asking how they enable their talent to be performing at their best.

About the author

As the Chief Operating Officer for SUSE APAC, I’m focused on enabling our team to deliver on the strategic vision for delivering cutting-edge Open-Source solutions that allow our customers to Innovate Everywhere. With more than a decade of experience as a senior executive and strategic consultant across the enterprise technology sector, I bring my expertise from sectors such as supply chain, construction and engineering to understand the complex challenges our customers are facing and how we can be best positioned to assist in their ongoing transformation.