What is the cost of not doing enterprise architecture?
Without an EA, an organisation may struggle to show how its IT projects and
technology decisions align with its business goals, leading to initiatives that
do not support the overall business strategy or deliver optimal value. A company
favouring growth through acquisition should be buying systems and negotiating
contracts that support onboarding of more users and more data/transactions
without cost increasing significantly. The EA should allow for understanding
which processes and technology would be impacted by the strategy, for modelling
out the impact and also being used as part of the decision process. Equally, the
architecture can consider strategic trends and be designed to support those, for
example, bankrupt US retailer, Sears, was slow to adopt e-commerce, allowing
competitors to capture the growing online shopping market. ... Your Enterprise
Architecture provides a framework for making informed decisions about IT
investments and strategies. Without the holistic view that EA offers,
decision-makers may lack the full context for their decisions, leading to
choices that are suboptimal or that fail to consider the interdependencies and
long-term implications for the organisation.
Making Software Development Boring to Deliver Business Value
Boerman argued that software development should become boring. He made the
distinction between boring software and exciting software: Boring software in
that categorization resembles all software that has been built countless times,
and will be so a billion times more. In this context, I am specifically thinking
about back-end systems, though this rings true for front-end systems as well.
Exciting software is all the projects that require creativity to build. Think
about purpose-built algorithms, automations, AI integrations, and the like.
Making software development boring again is about laying a prime focus on
delivering business value, and making the delivery of these aspects predictable
and repeatable, Boerman argued. This requires moving infrastructure out of the
way in such a way that it is still there, but does not burden the day-to-day
development process: While infrastructure takes most of the development time, it
technically delivers the least amount of business value, which can be found in
the data and the operations executed against it. New exciting experiments may be
fast-moving and unstable, while the boring core is meant to be and remain of
high quality such that it can withstand outside disruptions, Boerman
concluded.
New TDWI Assessment Examines the State of Data Quality Maturity Today
“With data becoming such a critical part of a business’s ability to compete,
it’s no wonder there’s a growing emphasis on data quality,” Halper began.
“Organizations need better and faster insights in order to succeed, and for that
they need better, more enriched data sets for advanced analytics -- such as
predictive analytics and machine learning.” She explained that to do this,
organizations are not only increasing the amount of traditional, structured data
they’re collecting, they’re also looking for newer data types, such as
unstructured text data or semistructured data from websites. Taken together,
these various types of data can offer significantly more opportunities for
insights, she added. As an example, Halper mentioned the idea of an organization
using notes from its call center -- typically unstructured or semistructured
text data -- to analyze customer satisfaction, either with a particular product
or with the company as a whole. This information can then be fed back into an
analytics or machine learning routine and reveal patterns or other insights
meaningful to the company. “Regardless of the type of data or its end use,” she
said, “the original data must be high quality. It must be accurate, complete,
timely, trustworthy, and fit for purpose.”
The Five Biggest Challenges with Large-Scale Cloud Migrations
Several issues can arise when attempting to migrate legacy systems to the
cloud. The system may not be optimized for cloud performance and scalability,
so it is important to develop and implement solutions that boost the system’s
speed and capacity to get the most from the cloud migration. Other issues
common with legacy system integration include data security, data integrity,
and cost management. The latter is often a particular concern because
companies may also be required to pay for training and maintenance in addition
to the cost of migration. ... The risks of migrating data to the cloud include
data security, data corruption, and excessive downtime, which can cost money
and negatively impact performance. To optimize migration success and minimize
downtime, it is vital for companies to understand the amount of data involved
and the bandwidth necessary to complete the transfer with minimal work
disruption. ... Due to poor infrastructure and configuration, many companies
cannot take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. Often, companies
fail to maximize the move from fixed infrastructure to scalable and dynamic
cloud resources.
Getting the BELT: Empowering Executive Leadership in Data Governance
The active engagement of the ELT in the data governance process is critical
not only for setting a strategic direction, but also for catalyzing a shift in
organizational mindset. By championing the principles of NIDG, the ELT paves
the way for a governance model that is both effective and sustainable. This
leadership commitment helps in breaking down silos, promoting
cross-departmental collaboration, and establishing a shared vision that
recognizes data as a pivotal asset. Through their actions and decisions,
executive leaders serve as role models, demonstrating the value of data
governance and encouraging a culture of continuous improvement. Their
involvement ensures that data governance initiatives are aligned with business
strategies, driving the organization toward achieving its goals while
maintaining data integrity and compliance. ... The journey towards effective
data governance begins with buy-in, not just from the ELT, but across the
entire organization. Achieving this requires the ELT to understand the
strategic importance of data governance and to communicate this value
convincingly.
Going passwordless with passkeys in Windows and .NET
Passkeys managed by Windows Hello are “device-bound passkeys” tied to your PC.
Windows can support other passkeys, for example passkeys stored on a nearby
smartphone or on a modern security token. There’s even the option of using
third parties to provide and manage passkeys, for example via a banking app or
a web service. Windows passkey support allows you to save keys on third-party
devices. You can use a QR code to transfer the passkey data to the device, or
if it’s a linked Android smartphone, you can transfer it over a local wireless
connection. In both cases the devices need a biometric identity sensor and
secure storage. As an alternative, Windows will work with FIDO2-ready security
keys, storing passkeys on a YubiKey or similar device. A Windows Security
dialog helps you choose where to save your keys and how. If you’re saving the
key on Windows, you’ll be asked to verify your identity using Windows Hello
before the device is saved locally. If you’re using Windows 11 22H2 or later,
you can manage passkeys through Windows settings.
Generative AI on its own will not improve the customer experience
Businesses around the world hope that, beyond the hype of generative AI, there
lies a near-term path to improving business efficiency and in parallel a
longer-term ability to grow revenue. There is one, not insignificant,
consideration to weigh before the true savings can be measured. In 2024, as in
2023, generative AI and ChatGPT both trail "Customer Service / Telephone
number" as search terms on Google in most countries. Most of those searches
involve a quest by a customer to reach a human being. There is great
frustration because most businesses are working hard to make it difficult to
reach a person. This gap between the corporate commitment to removing the
human connection in customer service and the customer's desire for a human
connection almost always points to a bad business process. The business must
examine why the customer doesn't use the self-service channel. This discovery
process is a precursor to deeper self-service powered by generative AI. Our
first recommendation is to step back and ensure the customer service process
you want to supercharge with generative AI satisfies customers.
How continuous SDL can help you build more secure software
Beyond making the SDL automated, data-driven, and transparent, Microsoft is
also focused on modernizing the practices that the SDL is built on to keep up
with changing technologies and ensure our products and services are secure by
design and by default. In 2023, six new requirements were introduced, six were
retired, and 19 received major updates. We’re investing in new threat modeling
capabilities, accelerating the adoption of new memory-safe languages, and
focusing on securing open-source software and the software supply chain. We’re
committed to providing continued assurance to open-source software security,
measuring and monitoring open-source code repositories to ensure
vulnerabilities are identified and remediated on a continuous basis. Microsoft
is also dedicated to bringing responsible AI into the SDL, incorporating AI
into our security tooling to help developers identify and fix vulnerabilities
faster. We’ve built new capabilities like the AI Red Team to find and fix
vulnerabilities in AI systems. By introducing modernized practices into the
SDL, we can stay ahead of attacker innovation, designing faster defenses that
protect against new classes of vulnerabilities.
Rethinking SDLC security and governance: A new paradigm with identity at the forefront
Poorly governed identities have become a gateway for substantial incidents.
High-profile breaches at companies like LastPass and Okta have illuminated the
attackers' method: exploiting the identity attack vector to orchestrate some
of the most notable breaches, using compromised accounts to potentially alter
source code and extract valuable information. These events underscore a clear
and present trend of identity theft through phishing or ransomware attacks,
which then pave the way for attackers to infiltrate the software development
lifecycle (SDLC), leading to the insertion of malicious code and the theft of
data. Despite the clear risks, organizations continue to fumble in securing
and managing these identities, making it the riskiest yet most overlooked
attack vector facing SDLC security and governance today. As we pivot to
address this critical oversight, it's imperative to understand the role of
identity within the SDLC. The “Inverted Pyramid" analogy is a useful
conceptual framework that captures the essence of the old and new paradigms
and how reorienting our approach can better protect against these insidious
threats.
Analyzing the CEO–CMO relationship and its effect on growth
It’s estimated that only 10 percent of Fortune 250 CEOs have marketing
experience. There’s also a dramatic acceleration of digital technology in the
world of marketing. We’re no longer judging marketing by television
commercials. There’s a whole slew of different components to think through.
And the data piece that you hinted at is that these customers’ signals are now
everywhere. It’s incumbent upon us as marketers to interpret them and feed
them back to our organizations in such a way that we don’t talk about data but
we talk about insights and are able to connect the dots. ... As we come up
with a means to measure marketing, the CEO or CFO needs to learn the
measurement systems in place to understand what it means when I cut budget,
what it means when I invest in it, and how we tie those activities to
outcomes. That robust measurement system can help you understand your brand,
how your customers perceive your brand, and what level of fidelity they give
you credit for. That’s where the brand scores are really helpful. But you also
need an econometric model to connect how the money you’re spending on
different channels such as video, content, and search—all working in
tandem—helps create the results you want.
Quote for the day:
"Success is the sum of small efforts,
repeated day-in and day-out." -- Robert Collier
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