Building a viable IT budget for 2021 in a time of uncertainty: Seven critical steps
In 2021, IT budget spends will be diversified over a broader range of
categories (digitalization, mobile computing, employee training, for example)
than in 2020, when IT budgets were heavily invested in security and cloud
services. Security and cloud services will still lead investment categories,
but organizations have reached an inflection point and feel they have attained
many of their initial goals in these areas. End users will continue to be
engaged in technology decision making. However, there are indications that
more organizations want to fully understand just how much they spend on IT
across the company. From a budgetary standpoint, this has sparked a movement
to consolidate more of the IT spend (and assets) under a single umbrella, with
IT in charge. Also in 2021, CFOs and other technology budget decision-makers
will expect more input from successful trials and proofs of concept before
they agree to fund new technology. This is in response to the mixed
performance of ROI formulas, and also to cost overruns, which have routinely
occurred with cloud services. That's not all. Below are seven additional
budget forecasts that IT budget planners should take into account before
building a 2021 IT budget.
Improvements in native code interop in .NET 5.0
With .NET 5 scheduled to be released later this year, we thought it would be a
good time to discuss some of the interop updates that went into the release
and point out some items we are considering for the future. As we start
thinking about what comes next, we are looking for developers and consumers of
any interop solutions to discuss their experiences. We are looking for
feedback about interop scenarios in general – not just those related to .NET.
If you have worked in the interop space, we’d love to hear from you on our
GitHub issue. Some items mentioned in this post are Windows-specific (COM and
WinRT). In those cases, ‘the runtime’ refers only to CoreCLR. ... C#
function pointers will be coming to C# 9.0, enabling the declaration of
function pointers to both managed and unmanaged functions. The runtime had
some work to support and complement the interop-related parts of the feature.
... C# function pointers provide a performant way to call native functions
from C#. It makes sense for the runtime to provide a symmetrical solution for
calling managed functions from native code. UnmanagedCallersOnlyAttribute
indicates that a function will be called only from native code, allowing the
runtime to reduce the cost of calling the managed function.
Ducati Motors to leverage IT transformation from Aruba and Lenovo
“Using the latest and most advanced technologies is part of Ducati’s DNA,”
said Konstantin Kostenarov, chief technology officer at Ducati. “Relying on
the best technologies made available through our partners has significantly
contributed to the overall improvement of processes, while at the same time
increasing the value of the results achieved. “The choices made two years ago
and the projects that have been carried out since then have allowed us to
tackle the various complexities of this sport in the most effective way
possible.” Giorgio Girelli, general manager of Aruba Enterprise,
commented: “Among the technologies that have emerged as a result of Covid-19,
the cloud is undoubtedly one that has proven its worth and made it possible to
better face crisis situations. “An internal commissioned survey reveals that
59% of those who were able to use cloud solutions during emergency situations
considered its use to be fundamental to their operations. “The sharing and
combination of the latest technologies between the three companies involved
has given life to a very innovative project focused on one goal: obtaining
maximum performance.”
Leveraging AI to Deliver a Personalized Experience in the New Normal
It is key to understand how different subscribers perceive different
experiences while gaming, attending a smart venue or traveling virtually. Each
of these experiences will vary for different individuals: e.g. a man in his
30s who works from home versus a teenager who moves around the city. These
experiences need to be predicted across various touch points, such as OTT game
apps or smart venues, the network, call center, retail, and billing. It is
also crucial to proactively identify anomalies and factors contributing to a
negative experience or positive experience in order to act fast to resolve
issues before they impact gaming customers, or to target the right customers
at the optimal time for an add-on purchase in a smart venue. The application
of AI and ML brings intelligent insights that are more precise than those
produced by existing processes and systems, and enables the CSP to predict
changes or anomalies in their customers’ experiences. AI and ML enable the
possibility to look at each subscriber based on their individual profile,
including demographics, device used or mobility to predict the experience more
accurately, and taking into account the individual sensitivities, biases and
expectations. The insights software learns with changing dynamics either at
the CSPs network, customer segment or market and adapts predictions
accordingly.
To build responsibly, tech needs to do more than just hire chief ethics officers
Just like the early days of digital, ethics can seem complex and remote.
Remember thinking, “The internet will never be big enough to disrupt my
industry? It can be tempting to assume you need a Ph.D. to debate complex
topics like algorithmic bias or exclusion, especially as many of those chief
ethics officers have those deep credentials and expertise. Even though tech
fancies itself as an industry that welcomes new types of talent and thinking,
credentialism is more part of the industry culture than we think – or admit.
(If you’re questioning that, just think about how popular it is to put
ex-employers in your Twitter biography.) Unless you work on ethics full time
or you’re a product VP, it’s easy to feel that you have no say or no role in
your company’s commitment to social responsibility, especially if you’re
underrepresented at your company or speaking up puts you at risk. Ethical
leaders play a powerful central role in coordinating, setting standards and
creating incentives, but they wouldn’t want to be the only ones to own this
work, either. Responsibility’s a muscle we build and practice. Doing the right
thing isn’t a one-off action, but a commitment to values that inform
day-to-day behaviors and decisions. So we need to create structures that
ensure company values are embedded in roles across the board.
What Is Resilience Engineering?
Resilience engineering today isn’t thought of as a function. However, just as
DevOps was a description of culture before it was a role and site reliability
was an extension of operations before it was a focus, I wouldn’t be surprised
if resilience engineering became a function in the new future. The first
question most will ask however is, “Isn’t this just SRE?” The purpose of the
term is to change the focus from simply reacting to incidents to developing
long-term response strategies for them. Because the expectation in these
environments is that things will break, resilience is the responsibility of
existing DevOps and cloud operations teams. When applications and services do
break, a “fly by the seat of your pants” response strategy will not work.
Resilience engineering, while rooted in engineering practices, is largely
focused on building strategies and a framework for their execution. This
leaves the process of building resilience into a largely unestablished system
in part because each system is unique. And, how you respond to issues in that
system will likely be unique, even if the management plane that reports issues
is not. ... For most, the best part of resilience engineering is taking what
is learned from previous incidents and finding ways to automate future
resolution.
Sustainability Through a Better 5G
Ericsson talks about ‘breaking the energy curve’ by providing products and
solutions that simply use less energy and are the practical choice for
companies striving to make a sustainable shift in their digital
transformation journey. Swapping old radio equipment with 5G-ready Ericsson
Radio System equipment nationwide enables service providers to serve 5G use
cases with a single software upgrade and can also save them up to 30 percent
on their energy consumption . For some operators these savings equate to
paying back the investment made on modernization within just three years –
who says sustainability does not go together with business goals? Looking to
the future of work and travel post-coronavirus, it’s clear that our global
mindset has shifted and that we can’t just go back to the way things were
before. It’s all about connectivity, especially during these challenging
times where keeping in touch with loved ones, essential services and
businesses is more important than ever. The next era will witness technology
not only serving our needs to stay connected but also enabling a more
inclusive and sustainable world. With a focus on real-time data built upon a
framework of sustainability, Ericsson have successfully architected a
5G-aware traffic management solution with AI embedded in its RAN Compute
software.
Working from home: The 12 new rules for getting it right
Remote working doesn't change some elements of corporate professionalism.
"Don't expect that colleagues, clients, and managers should always be
easygoing in terms of dress code, tone of voice and punctuality in the
remote workplace," Herman Tse, professor in the department of management at
Monash Business School, tells ZDNet. And although there is a screen now
separating you from your colleagues, don't take this as an opportunity to
prudently check emails or scroll Twitter during a video call, because others
can tell when you are multi-tasking, even if virtually. You wouldn't check
your phone in front of a co-worker giving an in-person presentation – so
there is no reason to act differently online. With 30-minute slots
being the default option when setting up a calendar meeting, calls that
could take a couple of minutes now last for much longer than necessary.
"There is work that needs to be done around calendar norms," Sowmyanarayan
adds. "Things that take two minutes should take two minutes." Before setting
up a day full of half-hour meetings, therefore, remember how long those
chats would have taken in an office. More often than not, you will find that
a shorter call is far more appropriate.
App Trimming in .NET 5
Trimming sounds great, but as with most good things, there is a catch. The
trimming does a static analysis of the code and therefore can only identify
types and members when they are referenced from code. However .NET offers a
great deal of dynamism, typically depending on reflection. For example,
Dependency Injection in ASP.NET Core uses reflection to select appropriate
constructors. This is largely transparent to the static analysis, so it
needs to either be told about the required types or be able to detect common
dynamism patterns – otherwise it will trim away code that is needed by the
application which will result in runtime crashes. ... .NET 5 can take it two
levels further and remove types and members that are not used. This can have
a big effect where only a small subset of an assembly is used – for example,
the console application above. Member-level trimming has more risk than
assembly level trimming, and so is being released as an experimental
feature, that is not yet ready for mainstream adoption. With assembly level
trimming, its more obvious when a required assembly is missing, with member
level trimming you need to have exhaustive testing of the app to ensure that
nothing has been trimmed that could be required.
Q&A: CTO tips on delivering cloud innovation to avoid disruption
Make sure to develop and leverage an internal requirements matrix of what
you are looking for. Be very clear about what you want and need from a
particular cloud solution. Stack rank key priorities and progressively
implement towards the long-term vision. Ask any vendor: How are things
audited? Do they comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR? What
technical support do they offer? Get a full picture of what the commitment
is by the vendor. Deployments that are measured in quarters are too slow,
companies need to think about how they can take advantage of the speed and
control of cloud deployments and use an agile approach to incrementally
transform. An important element to consider is the vendor’s application user
rate and the holistic usability of any cloud applications. One of the most
important things is usability and adaptability. Will this be easily
adaptable to fit your company’s needs? Look at their roadmap and past
innovations to get a better sense of their ability to push on innovation and
support the ever-changing needs of various businesses. This will give you a
better sense of their ability to adapt to the changing needs of your
company. Start a dialogue with vendors about how you need to demonstrate
results quickly.
Quote for the day:
"It is easy to lead from the front when there are no obstacles before you, the true colors of a leader are exposed when placed under fire." -- Mark W. Boyer
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