Digital Disruption in 2018 – Part 1

We are halfway through 2018 and looking back we can see that technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) have become ever more dominant. What else is shaping, or rather shaping up the businesses? Let us have a look.

C-Suite roles are evolving

Technical roles like software testing have historically sat in the realm of the IT department only. However, with digital transformation underway in most enterprises in 2018, the focus is shifting to the quality of applications as well as customer experience overall. Consequently, traditional IT functions such as testing and monitoring have started having higher visibility on the CIO’s agenda, and are becoming important for the rest of the C-Suite as well. What is coming out of the process is a more rounded team for IT operations, with team members contributing from different departments within the organization.

Outages and poor user experience are affecting the bottom line

Many organizations experienced significant outages in 2017. This included Amazon AWS, WhatsApp, Ryanair, Virgin Money Giving, Lowes etc. and gave very real business results. All businesses need to get a grip on performance issues in order to create a seamless UX experience. This year, businesses are trying to address the overall quality of their services to survive in an increasingly saturated landscape. What we can see as a result is a shifted focus in monitoring customer experience as well as the need for extensive end-to-end testing embedded within delivery lifecycles. Some organizations are leading the way in terms of ensuring optimal user experience through ongoing monitoring and effective testing of their websites and applications. However, many are still disproportionally focused on factors such as speed instead of quality, security and resilience.