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Just How Big is the Appetite for Application Development Modernization?

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Published December 13, 2018

Digital transformation is without doubt one of the biggest topics in the industry. You’ll easily recognise the conversation—it’s usually about modernizing application architectures and infrastructure, and it touches on Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), DevOps, Micro Services Architecture, and Cloud-Native Deployment.

So here is my simple question: how many organizations are ready for it? I was at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018 Asia Pacific on the Gold Coast recently, and took the opportunity to put that question to several Gartner analysts and some other industry watchers.

The Gartner analysts told me that there are still plenty of customers inquiring about how they can modernize their application infrastructure, culture, and organization. Those organisations, perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the analysts’ clients, are still on their way.

This is a larger percentage that I had expected, given that Gartner has made application development modernization a key topic in its annual events for at least the last four years.

But there is another perspective. A good friend who works for a start-up focusing on DevOps solutions tells me that 70 to 80 percent is quite conservative, based on what he is hearing from his customers.

For sure, he’s not talking to the same people as the analysts. Gartner’s clients presumably are talking to Gartner because they’re struggling with the transition, so you could assume they’re further on the journey than the customers of my friend’s start-up.

Either way, it’s apparent that in the broad market of Asia Pacific, there’s plenty of demand for assistance on that journey of digital transformation. Indeed, according to Gartner, 47 percent of CIOs in Asia Pacific report changes in their business model. And that means IT also needs to change with those business models. If you and your organization still think CI/CD, DevOps, Micro Services Architecture, and Cloud-Native are keywords that have nothing to do with your team, maybe the year of 2019 will be the year you start to change your mind.