At a recent informal lunch with IR executives in the Denver Tech Center, there was an air of expectation as always when the week just happened to be the last week of not just the month, but the quarter. A very important milestone for any company, particularly a public company such as IR, which is constantly being measured in the court of financial opinion. While it is not my place to comment on anything financial, and like everyone else I have to wait until the results are made public, I do anticipate hearing more good news.
The subject of the conversations represented a varied mix of topics, but what stood out for me is the monitoring of the application's performance remains an important consideration for every enterprise, even as what is being monitored is undergoing changes unlike we in IT have witnessed in a long time. Furthermore, the systems themselves are being refashioned into what Gartner so astutely calls the third platform – mainframes being the first platform and client / server being the second platform.
According to one summary of Gartner's work published as a LinkedIn blog post, the third platform can be "defined as the inter-dependencies between mobile computing, social media, cloud computing and information / analytics (Big Data) and possibly the Internet of Things (IoT). Gartner claims that these interdependent trends are transforming the way people and businesses relate to technology." As for the leaders in the development of the third platform I was more than pleased to see that HPE was included as the sole representative from the ranks of the major vendors, given HPE's much publicized pursuit of the "Idea Economy."
Should you have participated in my recent webinars you would be aware that I have shone a spotlight on the Idea Economy in the introduction to each webinar – take a look at the Webinar of March, 2016, NonStop X – The New Goal to view a replay of the webinar devoted to this topic of the Idea Economy. Including references to HPE's vision and strategy wasn't accidental, as in acknowledging that every business today has become a technology business and every business needs to transform to a hybrid infrastructure, it's really all about turning ideas into reality quickly.
"We are on the cusp of enormous change now and it's driven by what we are describing as the idea economy," says Meg Whitman, HPE CEO, in a video on the Idea Economy available on the HPE web site. "Ideas have always been the lifeblood of business; the difference now is, from idea to realization of that idea to actually being in business has gone from years to potentially days." And if I were to speculate, at the heart of this uptick in promotion of the third platform coinciding with the move to the idea economy, then it has a lot to do with rapid acceptance of mobile technology across all market segments.
For the NonStop community this is especially the case as whether the NonStop is supporting a financial solution or simply facilitating a mobile phone voice or text message, smartphones and tablets have grabbed the lion's share of transaction processing applications – the ease with which transactions today can be instigated from a mobile device is making almost all other methods obsolete. Turning ideas into reality? There's nothing like standing in line at your local coffee shop, getting a great idea, and then being able to communicate it with your peers to the point where real work can commence as soon as you walk into your office, hot coffee in hand.
Furthermore, when it comes to these application's performance monitoring, then it's through products like Prognosis that the NonStop community can see a visual depiction of all interactions that instantly map what is working and what isn't – ideas being turned into reality take on a whole different meaning to those in business when they can see charts leaping from the screen depicting a new idea's acceptance by a sizeable community of users. It's no good taking a good idea and turning it into a reality if there's no clear method to determine whether it's succeeding in the marketplace and monitoring solutions like Prognosis take away the guesswork that would otherwise be relied upon.
IR will be conducting another Payments Webinar on April 7, 2016, Retail Payments: Stay Ahead of the Curve. "The rapid acceptance of mobile and other alternative payment systems means that retail payment systems are becoming increasingly complex and expensive to manage and maintain," said Steve Gilde, Global Payments Alliance Director, IR. To which I can easily add there's still a lot more to come. Ideas have no limits and there's no lines that cannot be crossed but to be successful, results need to be monitored and scores kept – it's just unrealistic to expect all ideas to take off.
Gartner talks about there now being a third platform as a result of "inter-dependencies between mobile computing, social media, cloud computing and information / analytics (Big Data)." HPE believes all businesses are technology businesses even as we are living in an idea economy. IR's Gilde highlights that what is emerging is both complex and expensive and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Perhaps what we see on our monitors will tell the full story. Perhaps the likes of Prognosis will highlight what is succeeding.
Whatever business turns to for the visualization of its applications it has to be rapid as we are turning ideas into realization in days, but the wrong idea broadcast to a mobile community in real time inside of days may not be the outcome any business desires. I have a strong conviction that ideas will keep on coming where results will show up on a monitor almost immediately and for that, our dependence will only become greater. Yes, as we discussed over lunch, monitoring of the application's performance remains an important consideration for every enterprise.
