"You must build it how we want - or we won't come": part one

By Stuart Lauchlan, news and analysis editor

If there’s one thing that doesn’t change, it’s that things change. In a fast-moving digital economy, entire markets can be made – and broken – in the space of a few hours. Companies no longer have the luxury of captive markets or being able to dictate the pace of change safe in the knowledge that customers are unlikely to make a break for freedom.

The days of “if we build it – when we decide to build it! – they will come” are long over. Nowadays it’s more likely to be: you will build it – when we want it – and to our specification, or we will have gone off to one of your rivals. The field of dreams has become bogged down…

So companies are in a state of near permanent flux. The big challenge is keeping up with the demands to make large-scale changes quickly, simply in order to stay competitive.

Of course, it was ever thus in the hi-tech world. Back in 1965, Gordon Moore came up with 'Moore's Law' which observed an exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and predicted that there would be a doubling of transistors every couple of years. That remains true to this day; if anything the rate of innovation and change has increased. Moore wasn’t bold enough in his predictions!

So the challenge is to keep one step ahead of changing market conditions, new technologies and the skills issues. That in turn demands an organisational adaptability and flexibility that dictates that the successful ventures in the 21st century are those that can turn on the metaphorical coin and change direction.

Such organisations have become known as adaptive enterprises, companies in which innovation and change are not one-off events, but are engrained in the corporate life-blood.

In an adaptive enterprise, demand and supply are matched and synchronised at all times, and better still future demand and supply are predicted. Such firms will optimise resources, always using only those it needs and paying only for what it uses, but ensuring that the supply is adequate to meet demand.

Adaptive enterprises adjust operations quickly and smoothly to meet rapid changes in the market, the introduction of new technologies, and shifting business priorities. Over time, this attracts and keeps a loyal client or customer base. In the long-term, adaptive enterprises evolve with changes in the wider market so that their products or services never become obsolete.

Hewlett-Packard has made the adaptive enterprise a fundamental plank of its corporate offering to customers. It argues that there are a number of adaptive enterprise design principles. These include:

• Simplification. An adaptive enterprise simplifies complex IT environments. It consolidates applications and infrastructures, automates processes and virtualises resources. It breaks down vertical silos, eliminates redundant elements and reduces customisation. Simplification enables you to ease management burdens and respond faster to change.

• Standardisation. Standard processes, technologies and interfaces are at the heart of an adaptive enterprise. Common enterprise architectures and business processes reduce costs and make it easier to change. Standardisation allows you to integrate new technology more easily and spend less time and money of training.

• Modularity. An adaptive enterprise breaks down monolithic infrastructures into modular components that can easily be redeployed based on changing business needs. IT assets are virtualised to increase utilisation and enable IT supply to shift quickly to meet changes in business demand.

• Integration. Through integration, an adaptive enterprise establishes a tight link between business and IT. Business processes, applications and infrastructure components are connected to synchronise business and IT. Integration helps you make sure that IT delivers the resources to keep your critical applications and services running at peak performance.

Part two, know your customer, click here.