During the first six months of COVID, IT leaders and their CIOs came to the stark realization that their “rapid development” practices and paths to deploy minimally viable workflow applications weren’t fast enough. They needed apps developed, tested, and deployed in weeks, not quarters, and coding them from scratch was not a viable option.
Many IT leaders adapted to the dire circumstances and found ways to build apps to solve their immediate needs using low-code application development tools.
When the Huntsville City Schools faced a ransomware attack in the middle of a pandemic, what technology did they turn to first to continue education for their 23,000 students?
Security attacks are all too common these days, and having robust
technologies to support business continuity isn’t always a feasible option.
Like many others amid digital transformations, the school district leveraged
printing as a backup option to improve operational resiliency.
Ransomware attacks have hit many businesses, including the most recent on Colonial Pipeline, and attacks on service companies, manufacturing, hospitals, and retail leading the private sector.
Ransomware is one reason digitally transforming companies look to improve
their operational resiliency, but it’s not the only one. Forward-looking
businesses also consider hybrid working as a strategy that improves employee
experience while enhancing operational resiliency. Construction,
manufacturing, energy, field service, healthcare, and retail companies all
require operational resiliency to ensure that employees working in the field
and away from desks are successful at their jobs through a myriad of
real-world conditions. These businesses all recognize that digital
transformation requires a blend of digital and physical-world technologies
and collaborative practices. For example, organizations are also using
printers from HP like the
HP LaserJet Enterprise 400 Series
to
improve team collaboration
and enhance the employee experience as people adjust to hybrid working.
So, while digital transformation is strategically important, leaders must
also seek MSS (minimally simple solutions) to improve operational
resiliency, including print devices and solutions. The combination of
digital and physical-world capabilities ensure that customer experiences,
employee workflows, and field operations are agile, nimble, and resilient to
volatile operating conditions.
HP printer features make it a viable option for many operating environments.
The LaserJet Enterprise 400 Series offers 30 – 60 percent lower printer
costs and supports double-sided printing by default to reduce paper waste.
It’s also the world’s smallest multi-function printer and designed to fit
into tight workspaces without compromising advanced enterprise features.
Let’s look at some real-world examples of where the combination of digital and print technologies improves operational resiliency.
Many commercial general contractors and subcontractors have been investing
in digital technologies to improve productivity, safety, quality, and
efficiency at construction jobsites. It’s common to see superintendents and
forepersons carrying tablets to review BIM diagrams, access documents, and
complete daily reports.
But if you look in the construction jobsite trailer, you’ll see a mix of digital technologies, large screens, and industrial printers. It is not easy to ensure ubiquitous Wi-Fi access at a jobsite, especially on high floors of building construction. When construction is in a remote location, like offshore wind farms, mines, or road construction sites, Wi-Fi access may only be available during specific times of the day.
One construction project manager explained the work required to bridge the digital world with commercial and industrial construction’s complexities. He acknowledged, “We are still printing things that are already in a computer system, handing off tickets, dealing with a slew of apps, signing documents and tickets in the field, scanning them in, and trying to invoice at the end of the day to get paid.”
Anytime a customer experience or workflow bridges the physical and digital
worlds, there’s the opportunity to leverage digital and print technologies
to improve operational resiliency and offer conveniences.
One example is in B2C retail operations, where retailers have significantly
transformed because of COVID-19 to provide customers conveniences and safe
shopping options. Programs to buy at home and pick up goods at the store and
other mobile shopping options were popular and are likely to continue, even
as many cities relax health restrictions.
But the operationally most resilient retailers offer both digital and print conveniences in diverse areas. For example, UK retailer Morrisons is transitioning its loyalty program to digital coupons but allowing customers to print vouchers at their stores. Supermarkets, commissaries, and central kitchens use nutritional print labeling capabilities to keep customers informed and aware of dietary conflicts.
Another example is field operations, where service jobs are often scheduled, routed, and confirmed using mobile applications and devices. But what happens if the device breaks, the app is inaccessible, or there are Wi-Fi connectivity issues? A small glitch can put a halt to hundreds of people in field operations. The most resilient field operations teams also give people in the field printouts of their schedules and routes in case technical problems prevent them from using their devices and apps.
Having print and scanning capabilities can be the minimally most simple
solution to common problems and opportunities. But these solutions are even
more powerful when connected to workflows and digital tools using the HP
Open Extensibility Platform (OXP) with
OXPd JavaScript
or
OXPd .Net/Java.
Let’s consider some examples.
These are common physical-digital world intersections where printing and scanning offer simplicity and resiliency.
IT can’t offer the convenience and resiliency of integrated digital and
printing solutions without security and privacy considerations. The good
news is that HP LaserJet Enterprise 400 Series comes with enhanced HP Wolf
Security features, which includes
HP Trusted Platform
module to strengthen the protection of encrypted credentials and data stored
on the printer;
HP Sure Start
to automatically detect, stop, and recover from security attacks without IT
intervention; run-time intrusion detection;
HP Connection Inspector
that inspects outbound network connections; and policy-based fleet
deployment with HP Security Manager.
While IT leaders invest in digital transformation, finding simple and secure
ways to improve operational resiliency is important, especially when many
crucial customer experiences and workflows connect the digital and physical
worlds.
This post is brought to you by HP
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HP.
When you think about researching, shopping, and procuring new technologies, have you ever considered your buying persona?
What about the buying personas of your colleagues, stakeholders, and leaders?
This is a key question I explore in Episode 27 of 5 Minutes with @NYIke, where I share how NOT to buy new technology.
CIOs know these personas all too well, especially when working with their CEOs and leaders. Many of them fall into the category of picking technologies out and expecting IT to implement their selections.
An application is waiting more than three seconds for an API’s response. The response time exceeds the performance requirements for this API, so a monitoring tool triggers an alert that automatically creates an incident ticket. By the time a service manager in IT Ops responds, the API shows acceptable response performance, and the ticket is closed without investigation.
What the service manager doesn’t see is that this is the fifth time in two weeks that this API tripped alerts, and two customer service complaint tickets are likely related to the problem. This IT group isn’t using AIOps to correlate alerts and automate integrations between tools, so recognizing this customer-impacting and recurring problem, triaging the root cause, and prioritizing its remediation is not on anyone’s radar. Instead, IT is investing time to close tickets while customers are complaining.
IT organizations must manage to higher expected service levels while
supporting a mix of cloud-native applications, microservices, and legacy
monolithic applications. But progressive IT organizations, including
several leaders at hundred-year-old companies, are investing in AIOps, establishing SRE practices, changing how DevOps
teams improve application reliability, resolving incidents faster, and
reducing alert fatigue.
I spoke to Jason Walker, field CTO at
BigPanda, about applying SRE
methodologies, measuring Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and managing error
budgets using AIOps capabilities.
Jason acknowledges that more people in IT Ops and their business
stakeholders must understand SRE terminologies and methodologies. He
explains, “Error budgets are a useful way to think about issues in the
context of providing a reliable service. Maybe you’ve decided, “my SLO is
99.9 percent,” and the ratio of failures to attempts is going to be my
service level indicator (SLI). You can only afford one failure for
every 1,000 attempts. That’s your error budget.”
So instead of just measuring failures and capturing service levels measured against time, as in how many alerts per week, service level objectives are calculated differently and capture error events as a percent of the total events.
Using SLOs can change the business and operational mindset on how to
monitor, what to measure, when to alert, and how IT Ops responds to
incidents.
SREs use burndown reports for monitoring error rates in the same way
developers use this type of report to monitor sprint, release, and epic
burndowns. Alerts are only generated when the burn down exceeds the error
budget for a designated time period. Some groups use predictive algorithms
to also consider whether errors are trending in that direction.
Walker goes on to explain how measuring errors and tracking error budgets
with burndowns changes the approach. He says, “Sustained breaching over that
ratio for a given period or spiking by exceeding the ratio by a significant
amount should trigger an SLO alert so that you can take
action. You can scale it up to the business service level and
measure it down to the microservice level.”
The approach helps reduce alert fatigue, a condition that plagues IT Ops
when issues automatically trigger alerts and send off pagers whenever
there’s an issue. Business leaders can collaborate with IT Ops to define
error budgets with business context, so for example, they may identify
higher SLOs and lower error budgets during peak hours or to support peak
seasons.
So, to go back to my example, the first API errors issue probably does not
trigger an alert or record an incident if the SLO for this service was being
met and the error budget was not exceeded. But by the fifth error in
two weeks, chances are the error budget for this service is exceeded and
requires action.
IT Ops teams using AIOps
capabilities have an advantage when measuring error budgets. Let’s say the
API alert triggers other alerts from the consuming microservice and several
downstream applications.
The AIOps open box machine learning algorithms
can
correlate these alerts
and escalate them as one incident ticket to IT Ops. Tools then show the
time-sequence of alerts which
helps IT Ops triage the issue faster, and they can kick off automated responses that address known issues. The
combination of these capabilities allows IT Ops to improve their mean time
to resolution.
IT Ops also benefits by using the
AIOps open integration hub
that connects to ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. Customer service is
automatically notified of the issue and resolution via Slack, and when the
root SREs determine that the root cause is a code issue, a Jira defect is
created on the appropriate team’s backlog.
Error budgets serve as a tool for IT Ops to recognize and prioritize which
alerts require incident management. But SREs also use error budgets to
prioritize which operational issues and technical debt that agile teams
should invest development time to address.
These SREs use error budgets and their burndowns to have a dialog with agile
product owners on prioritization. When business services, applications,
dataops services, or microservices consistently exceed their error budgets,
there should be a rationale to invest in the development effort to address
root causes. On the other hand, if the product owner isn’t prioritizing
remediations, then IT Ops may be justified in reducing the SLOs and managing
to a larger error budget.
SREs using a topology mesh
can show the dependencies and relationships between microservices,
applications, databases, and business services to the product owner and
application architects. So once there is agreement on upgrades and fixing
defects, these maps help illustrate where development teams should focus on
improvements.
Defining SLOs and error budgets is a key practice for IT organizations
implementing digital transformations, hybrid working, cloud migrations, and
other technology investments. Using AIOps in the implementation is a
game-changer as it correlates alerts from multiple sources, streamlines
incident reporting, supports faster issue triage, and enables workflow
integrations.
This post is brought to you by BigPanda
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of BigPanda.
I recently spoke with a group of all-star CIOs and IT leaders about their company’s plans, support models, and approaches to improve employee experiences while transitioning to hybrid working. Several CIOs acknowledged that transitioning to a hybrid model is more challenging than the abrupt switch to remote working we all experienced last year because of COVID-19.
One CIO told me, “We had no choice last year to switch to remote working. But this year, we have to consider business requirements, employee needs, transformation opportunities, operating conditions, and regulations when determining policies and defining the hybrid work operating model.”
I have to admit that I'm skeptical whether non-technical companies will successfully execute a software development strategy routed in microservices.
There's a long history of software development teams seeking modular and reusable code and services. We chased object-oriented programing, generic methods, and service-oriented architectures, leaving a trail of technical debt behind. How will this time be different?
Janet started a new job during COVID-19 as head of product management and is responsible for leading several teams in developing and upgrading customer-facing applications. Her company just started hybrid working, and she’s eager to engage her teams on more innovative dialogs and collaborative planning.
