CAI - Case Study - iLink Digital

10th October 2024

by iLink Digital

Modernizing Telecom Operations: ServiceNow Solutions for Supply Chain, Vendor, and Security Management

The telecom industry is undergoing a seismic shift as rapid technological advancements—such as 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT)—create new demands for connectivity and service delivery. In fact, global mobile data traffic is projected to increase by 47% annually, reaching a staggering 77 exabytes per month by 2025. As customer expectations rise and competition intensifies, telecom operators must prioritize operational efficiency to manage their intricate supply chains, vendor relationships, and security protocols effectively. This need for efficiency was highlighted recently when over 100,000 users across the U.S. reported issues with their Verizon cell service. A Verizon outage left more than 200,000 customers nationwide, including in Chicago, in SOS mode for hours on Monday, causing a surge in complaints on social media.

In this context, ServiceNow Solutions stands out as a transformative platform that can modernize telecom operations. This blog will explore how ServiceNow solutions can automate supply chain operations, centralize vendor onboarding and contract management, and enhance telecom security with its Security Operations (SecOps) capabilities. Additionally, we’ll discuss how Now Assist’s TSM capabilities can improve service delivery and support, ensuring that telecom companies remain agile and competitive in an ever-evolving landscape. Continue reading to fully grasp how these capabilities can help you achieve success for your telecom business.

Automating Telecom Supply Chain Operations

Managing a telecom supply chain is no small feat, especially with the growing complexity of global networks and the demand for real-time data. From coordinating multiple suppliers to tracking inventory and orders across regions, telecom providers face significant operational challenges and setbacks that may hinder efficiency and increase costs with outdated processes. Automation has emerged as a game-changing solution, streamlining supply chain processes and providing telecom companies with the tools to stay competitive.

Challenges in the Telecommunications Supply Chain

Complex global networks of suppliers and vendors

Telecom providers often rely on a vast network of suppliers spread across different regions, each with its timelines, practices, and performance standards. For example, a telecom company sourcing network equipment from multiple vendors across Europe and Asia may face delays due to region-specific regulations or transportation issues. This complexity can create significant communication barriers, leading to delays in equipment delivery and inaccurate inventory forecasting.

Lack of real-time visibility into inventory, orders, and delivery timelines

Telecom providers struggle to track inventory levels across multiple locations and manage delivery timelines without centralized visibility. A company may have excess inventory in one region while experiencing shortages in another, but without real-time data, this imbalance isn’t immediately visible. This can lead to stockouts in critical areas, delayed installations, and reduced customer satisfaction due to service disruptions.

Inability to manage sudden demand shifts

Telecom providers must rapidly adjust to fluctuating demand, especially during peak seasons or when launching new services. However, without real-time demand planning tools, reacting to these changes becomes difficult. For instance, during the rollout of 5G services, a telecom provider may experience unexpected spikes in demand for equipment, leading to delays and service bottlenecks if inventory is not properly managed.

Disparate systems and lack of unified dashboards

Teams across the supply chain often rely on different systems to track performance, leading to disconnected data. This lack of integration results in delays in decision-making and missed opportunities for optimization. A procurement team may use one system for vendor tracking while the logistics team uses another for managing delivery schedules. Without a unified dashboard to consolidate this information, identifying bottlenecks or optimizing vendor performance becomes difficult, slowing down operations and increasing costs.

ServiceNow’s Supply Chain Solutions for Telecom:

Automation of inventory tracking

ServiceNow automates inventory processes, ensuring telecom providers always have accurate, real-time data on stock levels. This eliminates guesswork and allows telecoms to optimize inventory levels. For example, a telecom provider that previously experienced frequent stockouts can now anticipate demand fluctuations and ensure inventory is readily available.

Order management and real-time demand planning

Automated order workflows through ServiceNow offer telecom providers real-time visibility into customer demand and supply levels, allowing them to adjust orders accordingly. This means fewer delayed shipments and more accurate delivery timelines.

Unified dashboards

ServiceNow’s unified dashboards provide a consolidated view of all supply chain operations, from inventory tracking to vendor performance. Telecom providers can monitor supply chain metrics in real-time, quickly identify delays, and take proactive measures to prevent disruptions. Providers can instantly see where bottlenecks are occurring, whether due to vendor delays or transportation issues and take immediate action.

Predictive analytics for demand forecasting

ServiceNow uses advanced analytics and machine learning to predict demand shifts and optimize stock levels. Telecom providers can forecast demand based on historical data and market trends, allowing for proactive adjustments. For instance, during a new product launch or seasonal spikes in demand, predictive analytics ensures the right amount of inventory is available, reducing the risk of overstocking or stockouts. This not only improves supply chain efficiency but also reduces costs associated with holding excess inventory.

Centralizing Vendor Onboarding and Contract Management

When communication is scattered and processes are not streamlined, delays can occur, impacting service delivery and increasing operational risks. Managing multiple vendors in the telecom supply chain presents significant challenges, particularly when it comes to contracts and compliance. Telecom providers often grapple with the complexities of handling various contracts and ensuring adherence to compliance requirements across different regions. This fragmented approach can lead to difficulties in tracking vendor performance and swiftly resolving issues. As a result, it becomes crucial for telecom providers to centralize their vendor management to enhance accountability and improve overall efficiency.

ServiceNow’s Vendor Management Module

ServiceNow’s Vendor Management Module addresses these challenges through a comprehensive approach:

Vendor Performance Management

Track SLAs, contracts, and performance metrics in real-time to ensure vendors meet their obligations.

Automated Workflows

Streamline communication and expedite issue resolution, reducing delays and enhancing collaboration between vendors and internal teams.

Predictive Analytics

Leverage data insights to identify trends in vendor performance, optimize resource allocation, and improve network services.

Centralized Contract Repository

Maintain a single source of truth for all vendor contracts, making it easier to manage compliance and renewals.

A leading digital services provider faced inefficiencies from diverse technologies and manual processes. Implementing ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) streamlined operations, achieving 99% accuracy in ticket assignment and reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) by 30%.

With 95% of incidents automatically resolved and zero-touch ticket routing, response times improved from days to hours. The integration of ServiceNow Virtual Agent enhanced self-service capabilities, leading to a 40% reduction in service requests. This transformation empowered the organization to drive innovation and operational excellence through automation.

Enhancing Telecom Security with ServiceNow’s Security Operations (SecOps)

The telecom industry faces evolving cybersecurity challenges that require urgent attention. Growing threats like data breaches and malware attacks compromise sensitive information and customer trust. Additionally, the complexity of interconnected infrastructures creates vulnerabilities that are hard to secure. Managing operational risk in these intricate networks is challenging due to a lack of visibility, making it difficult to prevent disruptive incidents—studies show that 60% of telecom outages are linked to security failures. Furthermore, keeping up with evolving regulatory standards complicates compliance, leading to potential legal issues and operational inefficiencies. Addressing these challenges is essential for strengthening the security posture of telecom organizations and ensuring operational integrity.

Strengthening Telecom Security with ServiceNow SecOps

ServiceNow’s Security Operations (SecOps) offers a comprehensive solution that enhances security posture through various key features designed to address the unique challenges faced by the industry:

Security Incident Response

ServiceNow SecOps enables organizations to prioritize and respond quickly to security threats using automated workflows. This ensures that critical incidents are handled promptly, reducing potential damage.

Vulnerability Response

With the ability to respond efficiently to vulnerabilities based on their business impact, telecom providers can focus resources on the most critical risks, minimizing exposure to attacks.

Security Posture Control

The platform allows organizations to gain visibility into which assets are protected and which are at risk. This understanding is vital for informed decision-making and resource allocation.

Threat Intelligence Security Center

ServiceNow provides a comprehensive platform to bolster cybersecurity posture through advanced threat intelligence. This feature equips telecom providers with the knowledge to anticipate and mitigate risks before they escalate.

Configuration Compliance

The system identifies, prioritizes, and remediates misconfigured software, ensuring that configurations adhere to best practices and reducing vulnerabilities.

Performance Analytics for Security Operations

Real-time analytics help organizations anticipate trends, prioritize resources, and continuously improve security operations. This proactive approach allows telecom providers to stay ahead of potential threats.

Event Management

ServiceNow transforms event noise into actionable insights, enabling organizations to identify issues before they happen and enhancing overall situational awareness.

Data Loss Prevention Incident Response

By integrating SecOps with data loss prevention tools, telecom providers can effectively reduce exposure to data breaches and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

ServiceNow implemented its Security Operations to enhance security incident response and vulnerability management, achieving remarkable efficiency gains. The organization accelerated alert processing by 6X, allowing security analysts to handle 50% more incidents. This automation saved approximately $5.7 million annually in operational costs by streamlining workflows and reducing manual data collection.

With integrated tools, alerts are prioritized automatically, and contextual information is gathered effortlessly, enabling analysts to focus on investigations rather than administrative tasks. The transition from traditional methods, such as spreadsheets, to automated processes not only improved incident handling but also enhanced job satisfaction among security personnel, helping attract and retain top talent. Overall, ServiceNow’s approach transformed its security operations into a proactive and efficient environment, ensuring robust protection against evolving cyber threats.

Empowering Organizations: The Impact of ServiceNow GRC on Risk Management

ServiceNow’s Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solution empowers businesses to seamlessly maintain compliance and effectively manage risks. Here’s how:

Streamlined Risk Assessments: ServiceNow GRC automates the risk assessment process, allowing organizations to quickly identify and evaluate risks without the delays associated with manual methods. This efficiency ensures timely insights and faster decision-making.

Integrated Compliance Audits: By automating compliance audits, ServiceNow GRC reduces the administrative burden on teams. This integration minimizes human error, enhances accuracy, and ensures that compliance is consistently maintained across all operations.

Dynamic Reporting: ServiceNow GRC provides customizable reporting tools that deliver clear visibility into risk and compliance statuses. This transparency helps stakeholders make informed decisions and fosters a culture of accountability within the organization.

Improved Risk Visibility: A use case example highlights how a global enterprise implemented ServiceNow GRC and achieved enhanced risk visibility. This clarity not only reduced the likelihood of operational disruptions but also improved overall governance and strategic planning.

Proactive Governance Framework: By adopting a proactive governance model, organizations can anticipate and mitigate risks before they impact operations. This approach strengthens the organization’s resilience and enhances its ability to navigate regulatory challenges effectively.

Enhancing Telecom Service Delivery & Support: How Now Assist’s TSM Capabilities Help

Now Assist is an advanced AI-powered solution from ServiceNow designed to enhance service delivery across various industries. Here’s how it excels in the Telecom industry:

Virtual Agent Capabilities

24/7 Availability: The Virtual Agent provides round-the-clock support, ensuring that customers can get assistance anytime, without the need for human agents.

Automated Conversations: It engages customers in automated dialogues to troubleshoot issues and answer common queries, reducing response times significantly.

Personalization: The Virtual Agent learns from interactions, allowing it to deliver tailored responses and solutions based on individual customer histories and preferences.

Telecom Service Management (TSM) Features

Incident Management: Streamlines the process of reporting and resolving incidents, enabling faster recovery and minimizing downtime for customers.

Service Request Automation: Automates routine service requests, such as plan changes and billing inquiries, allowing for quicker resolutions and improved operational efficiency.

Performance Monitoring: Tracks service performance metrics in real time, providing insights that help optimize service delivery and identify areas for improvement.

TELCO-Specific Enhancements

Integration with Telecom Systems: Seamlessly integrates with existing telecom infrastructure and systems, enhancing workflow efficiency without disrupting operations.

Natural Language Processing (NLP): Employs advanced NLP to understand customer inquiries in context, improving the accuracy of issue resolution and reducing escalation rates.

Scalability: Designed to handle high volumes of service requests, Now Assist scales effortlessly to meet the growing demands of telecom providers as they expand their customer base.

A leading telecom service provider implemented ServiceNow to streamline operations and improve customer service. By transitioning to ServiceNow, the company saved nearly $1 million in the first year and achieved significant efficiency gains, with support agents saving 10-15 minutes per incident. The introduction of automation reduced ticket creation by 80% through eBonding, allowing customers to submit requests directly from their systems. This transformation enabled faster issue resolution, enhanced customer satisfaction, and positioned the provider to manage growth effectively while improving overall service delivery.

Conclusion

In this blog, we explored how ServiceNow is transforming telecom operations—from automating supply chains and streamlining vendor management to strengthening security and enhancing service delivery with AI. As a trusted ServiceNow partner, iLink Digital is proud to bring these cutting-edge solutions to telecom providers, helping them stay agile and competitive. With over 20 years of experience and a deep understanding of the industry, we collaborate closely with ServiceNow to deliver tailored solutions that address the unique challenges of telecom operations.

ServiceNow is already a proven leader, with over 7,700 enterprise customers worldwide, including nearly 80% of the Fortune 500. By partnering with iLink Digital, you’ll gain access to these powerful capabilities, customized to fit your specific needs. Let’s work together to drive efficiency, enhance security, and future-proof your operations. Reach out to us today and discover how we can help you achieve your goals with ServiceNow.

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7th October 2024

by Thangaraj Petchiappan

The Rise of Cloud FinOps: Unlocking Cloud Cost Optimization

According to Gartner’s prediction, “Organization spent on Public cloud enablement is projected to reach $675.4 billion in 2024, at a CAGR of 20.4%”. Over 30% of cloud spending was wasted and inefficient, costing billions of dollars in loss.

As organizations continue to adopt public cloud infrastructure at a torrential pace, traditional IT financial processes often fall short of addressing dynamic cloud consumption patterns and complex migrations, leading to a lack of visibility into sources of cost overruns. The rise of cloud financial management, FinOps, offers an arsenal of tools, resources, and wisdom to streamline financial overspending and regain control to achieve fiscal responsibility and business agility.

This blog explores how the FinOps framework is transforming cloud cost management, providing valuable insights into its core principles, strategies, and roadmaps, enabling businesses to optimize their cloud spending, enhance visibility into expenditure, and foster cross-functional collaboration across teams.

Common Billing Errors in Cloud Services

The complexity of billing statements: Cloud billing statements are often intricate and lengthy as it has billing metrics that can vary between providers, resulting in billing statements and misinterpreting costs and confusion.

Hidden Charges: Additional charges, often stemming from unauthorized usage, misconfigured services, or shadow IT projects, can lead to billing disputes and financial discrepancies. It’s essential to be vigilant and maintain control to avoid these issues.

Over-Provisioning and Idle Resources: Organizations may often inadvertently over-provision resources more than necessary or fail to shut down idle instances, resulting in unnecessary costs. This often happens when multiple teams share resources.

Multi-cloud Environments: Multi-cloud environments pose significant challenges due to different billing structures and terminologies, making it difficult to track overall cloud consumption effectively.

Recursive Function Costs: Recursive Function often leads to unexpectedly high charges rapidly even before budget alerts trigger, especially in a serverless environment.

Service Overlaps: Service overlaps can drive significant costs; for instance, simultaneously running multiple instances for redundancy without proper monitoring and governance may lead to unnecessary expenses.

Effectively managing cloud costs is crucial due to the intricate complexities of negotiated rates and diverse pricing models. To combat these challenges, adopting a FinOps strategy is imperative for organizations to actively monitor and optimize their cloud spending in real-time, ensuring it aligns with their business objectives.

What is FinOps?

Cloud Financial Operations [FinOps] is an operational framework that optimizes cloud spending while maximizing business value and keeping budgets under control. This cultural practice enhances the collaboration between technical, finance, and business teams to ensure effective resource utilization. It is not just merely cutting costs but ensuring real-time visibility and accountability into cloud usage, enabling organizations to understand their cloud costs better and make informed decisions.

“According to McKinsey, implementing FinOps (cloud financial management) can enable organizations to decrease their cloud expenses by 30% to 40% and cut down wasted cloud resources by as much as 35%.”

Three Phases of FinOps Framework

Beyond cloud cost management, FinOps offers a strategic approach for organizations for their cloud spending. The FinOps framework consists of three tenants: Inform, Optimize, and Operate, emphasizing cloud cost reporting, optimization, and continuous improvement.

Inform (Visibility and Allocation)

In the inform phase, FinOps helps organizations gather insights into data sources for cloud costs, usage, and efficiency from CSPs. By leveraging this data for allocation, analysis, and reporting, teams can enhance their capabilities in budgeting and forecasting trends and empower organizations to make informed decisions that optimize their cloud investments.

Optimize (Rates & Usage)

This phase focuses on identifying opportunities for enhancing cloud efficiency and additional cost savings by leveraging the capabilities developed in the Inform phase. It involves various options for resource optimization, including rightsizing unused assets, optimizing the container costs, maximizing the reserved instances, adopting modern architecture, and managing workloads. It ultimately improves visibility and reporting processes that align with organizational value and their cloud investments.

Operate (Continuous Improvement & Usage)

This phase involves implementing organizational changes to improve FinOps practice through establishing cloud governance policies, compliance monitoring, empowering practitioners to create basic budgets, and forecasting by evaluating performance that is aligned with business objectives.

Six Core Principles of FinOps Framework

Planning and Budgeting: A recent FinOps foundation survey revealed that “nearly 20% of cloud-based application owners do not validate their cloud usage budgets.” Planning and budgeting are essential components of FinOps strategy as they provide tools for planning, controlling, and optimizing cloud spending as it serves as a catalyst for directing the organizations.

Visibility: The cost of cloud infrastructure is transparent to everyone involved, allowing them to fully understand the impact of their actions on the bottom line and make confident, informed decisions.

Cost Optimization: FinOps aims to optimize cloud spending by implementing various techniques for rightsizing resources, eliminating waste, and improving efficiency in cloud environments.

Accountability: FinOps allows everyone involved in the cloud infrastructure to take responsibility for their costs and work together to optimize spending to drive financial accountability.

Collaboration: It emphasizes the shared fiscal responsibility model of the FinOps model, fostering cross-functional communication between finance and technical teams to align cloud spending with business objectives.

Governance: Accelerating business value begins with establishing frictionless cloud governance policies to streamline IT financial operations and cloud spending. Moreover, it is crucial to empower IT, finance, and business teams with training to manage and deploy the resources effectively.

Case Study: A Leading Media Asset Management Company Achieves 30% Cost Savings with FinOps Framework.

A leading media and broadcast management had encountered several challenges such as inflated cloud bills, minimal insight into the cloud usage and spending due to over-provision of cloud resources. Our cloud FinOps experts conducted a cost optimization process, including identifying underutilized cloud assets and recommending rightsizing strategies. With our holistic approach, the client has achieved a 30% reduction in their cloud spending without compromising performance, ensuring effective resource utilization and increased accountability, ultimately driving long-term business growth and success.

Discover How Our FinOps Framework Controls Rising Cloud Costs!

Roadmap for Successful Cloud FinOps Adoption

Define clear cloud cost management goals: Define the crystallized objectives of the Cloud FinOps journey with suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor its progress toward achieving its objectives.
Create a team to assess the current financial practices: Conduct a thorough assessment of your organization’s existing financial practices of cloud usage. Identify the areas where cost optimization can be improved.
Implement cost allocation strategies: Strategically implement robust cost allocation strategies to effectively track and attribute the cloud costs across departments and projects that are aligned with organizational FinOps goals.
Embrace Chargeback: Chargeback is the process of attributing cloud costs back to specific departments or project teams. By leveraging chargeback mechanisms, FinOps ensures responsible cloud consumption and assigns activities based on budget constraints, enabling organizations to make informed decisions.
Integrate Showback: Showback is a vital component of the FinOps Framework, navigating the complexity of cloud finances by creating financial awareness and accountability within the organization, even if the actual costs are not being charged back. This proactive approach is especially useful in the early stages of FinOps.
Fostering a Culture of Continuous Optimization: Regular assessment and adjustments of your Finops practices are paramount for evolving business needs.
Rightsizing Resources: Rightsizing involves adjusting cloud resources to optimize balance performance and cloud costs. This process requires a thorough understanding of current resource costs and utilization, including metrics like CPU and memory usage obtained from monitoring tools.

Challenges in Implementing Cloud FinOps

While cloud FinOps provides tangible benefits, some significant challenges may arise due to the process, technical implementation, or general perception of the changes within the teams.

Cultural Shift: Cloud FinOps requires a cultural shift where financial accountability and responsibility are shared across the organization. This can be difficult in companies where business units, finance, and technical teams operate in silos, leading to a lack of collaboration on budgeting and planning on resource management.

Complexity of Multi-cloud Environments: The dynamic and complex nature of hybrid or multi-cloud environments presents significant challenges due to the unique pricing models of different cloud providers. Therefore, a strategic approach is required to effectively place workloads and monitor and track them continuously to ensure cost efficiency and compliance.

Data Integrity: As organizations are often overwhelmed with the sheer volume of data, it can lead to integration issues, inconsistencies, and the inability to uncover meaningful insights. Hence, ensuring the data integrity and accuracy for reporting and analysis is critical for effective decision-making.

Tool Integration: Integrating FinOps tools with existing infrastructure can pose several challenges, especially in organizations with legacy infrastructure.

Despite these challenges, the journey towards efficient cloud cost management is paramount and rewarding, providing organizations with unparalleled insights and control over their cloud investments.

Embrace Your Cloud FinOps Journey with iLink Digital

Embarking on the cloud FinOps journey is no small feat; it is continuous learning, adapting, and improving the process. As public cloud enablement continues to grow, the demand for effective cost management will increase, making FinOps an essential strategy for businesses aiming to optimize cloud expenditures while ensuring every dollar spent on their cloud investments delivers maximum value.

With over two decades of experience, iLink Digital empowers organizations to identify, optimize, and control their cloud footprint at scale. Our FinOps experts assist you in fostering a cost-conscious culture of accountability and establishing financial governance that aligns with the organization’s engineering practices and strategic goals, ultimately driving sustainable growth and innovation in the cloud era.

Let’s discuss your cloud challenges with our cloud expert today!

Check out our Security and Infrastructure Services!

Thangaraj Petchiappan

Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at iLink Digital

Author

Thangaraj Petchiappan leads the company’s digital transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 clients. He focuses on enhancing infrastructure automation and integrating advanced bot solutions across various industries, including healthcare, oil & gas, manufacturing, telecom, retail, and NPO sectors. As the founder of the AI-Powered Cybersecurity iLab in Texas, he spearheads the development of innovative AI and ML solutions. Additionally, Thangaraj shares his expertise as a keynote speaker, cloud advocate, and coach, offering guidance on digital transformation and technology leadership.

25th September 2024

by Olivier Travers

Citizen Developers Can Scale & Work with IT Pros Like Never Before with Microsoft Fabric

When Microsoft Fabric reached General Availability (GA) in November last year, we shared our initial experience pioneering this platform across a variety of scenarios, concluding that “there’s a different Fabric for each use case.” With the rise of Real Time Intelligence highlighted during Build last May, Fabric showed even more versatility across a wide range of industries, organization sizes, and functional requirements.

As we publish this from the FabCon Europe conference in Stockholm, six months after the initial FabCon Vegas, we’re getting close to one year into GA and the dust is starting to settle. If you take a step back from technology, all our Fabric projects have something in common. Or rather someone, as the common factor is human rather than technical.

What Fabric does that no other data platform had accomplished yet is to bring ALL user personas to truly collaborate in one place, across the entire analytics journey. From business users who live in Excel and PowerPoint, to Power BI data modeling afficionados, to seasoned data engineers and scientists, we can finally all work together, as well as understand and appreciate better what everyone else is contributing.

We’ve seen too many large organizations suffer from disconnects between their various teams, with poor shared understanding of their respective needs and challenges. No matter how great the individual parts are, somehow the sum ends up being less than the parts. Fabric solves that friction. Let’s start by looking at it from the perspective of regular business users.

Tap Into Your Business Knowledge & Conquer the Learning Curve

Power BI’s initial success came in large part from the fact it’s an approachable reporting tool for business users coming from an Excel background. But reporting needs clean and structured data. Unfortunately, getting to that stage often remained a bottleneck for people trying to solve their data problems by themselves. Dataflows Gen1 and Datamarts did add self-service data transformation and warehousing to the Power BI platform, but they came with performance and functional limitations that put a glass ceiling on top of solutions developed by power users. Meanwhile, Power BI’s native orchestration capabilities were limited and often required adding tools such as Power Automate.

With Microsoft Fabric, these somewhat arbitrary limitations are lifted with accessible yet fully scalable orchestration, ETL/ELT, and lakehouse/warehouse tooling. To start, Data Factory pipelines bring not only a no-code scheduler to the Power BI world, but also make fast copy activities very easy. That includes retrieving data from REST APIs which used to require complicated manual work using Power Query.

In combination with Pipelines, Dataflows Gen2 come with better materialization options than their predecessors, making them a more versatile and open solution for easy data transformations. They’re also catching up with incremental refresh capabilities that were so far missing. Meanwhile, the lakehouse and warehouse SQL endpoints have built-in graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and copilot-based T-SQL code generation. You can start using SQL without being a full-blown database administrator, and there’s even a new T-SQL notebook where you can explore and document your findings.

For the most demanding jobs, Data Wrangler combines a no-code GUI reminiscent of Power Query with the scalability and performance of the Apache Spark engine. This, combined with the matching copilot, will ease many more people into learning Python by tweaking generated code rather than starting from an intimidating blank page. You know where else there’s also a copilot that generates Python code? Excel, the tool that you’ll never pry out of the hands of business users. It makes even more sense for them to get on a gentle learning path and become able to use what’s arguably the most popular language in the data analytics world.

With Fabric, citizen developers are able to take their homegrown solutions further before requiring help from dedicated data engineers, if they need it at all. And if they do require help, the pros won’t have to throw away everything and start again in a completely different tool. Business users can capture their requirements by building something, not just talking about it, and sustaining it sometimes for years by themselves. If they do want IT support eventually, pro developers will be able to take it from there and add more robust practices such as continuous integration and development.

Explore More Ambitious Use Cases Before You Need to Call the Cavalry

Covering the end-to-end journey from data ingestion to reporting would be a great value proposition by itself, but Fabric offers so much more than that. Your Power BI semantic models and reports are no longer the end of the data journey, but rather the core of a larger architecture. The semantic model is typically where business logic is added to make full sense of actuals so that past data can be sliced and diced by dimension. But what about descriptive and prescriptive analytics? How do you add value on top of your past data so that you’re not limited to watching a rear-view mirror? Power BI alone is a read-only proposition with limited options for advanced analytics or actionable reporting.

With Fabric, two new complementary patterns are available:

Manual data entry of forecasts and drivers can be performed with tools such as Lumel Inforiver and ValQ, which work as native apps on Fabric and can seamlessly capture input from Power BI visuals and save it into OneLake, with almost-instant recursive feedback in the host report.

With Semantic Link, you can also consume semantic models using Pyspark where you’ll generate a forecast, regression analysis, or countless other analytics payloads. This new data can then be saved into OneLake and be consumed back into the original semantic model. Not only can you now easily compare actuals, forecasts, budgets, and other series, but you can also keep track of forecasting accuracy in one place.

These integrated capabilities make Microsoft Fabric, in combination with natively-hosted ISVs, a contender worthy of consideration in the FP&A/xP&A category (Financial / Expanded Planning & Analysis) which has traditionally been dominated by expensive proprietary solutions with long implementation cycles. We have also been successful in using Fabric for intricate analytics requirements that were previously tackled by developing custom data apps for a much higher cost.

Data Modeling & Engineering Finally Together

Many organizations end up with a sizable gap between their data engineering teams, who might optimize for speed and maintainability on one hand, and BI data modelers on the other hand who have very specific requirements centered around dimensional modeling and star schemas. When the BI side receives data that’s still in third normal form or has been flattened into wide tables, they end up resorting to crutches that scale poorly, like using Power Query way beyond its intended scale or resorting to DAX calculated tables. This is a costly mistake.

Data modelers should be the internal clients of data engineers, but it’s easier said than done when different teams use completely different toolsets. By bringing them under one roof, collaboration becomes easier to pursue. The gold layer in a lakehouse should be custom built to conform with semantic modeling best practices. This is now easier to achieve thanks to the tight integration between each of Fabric’s workloads. It will take time for the market to fully realize and internalize this, and there will be some internal resistance and turf battles in some places for sure, but this is a big win.

Our Recommendations

While Fabric can be used for a top-down, IT centric approach, it would be a missed opportunity not to tap its potential for true collaboration and deep involvement from business stakeholders who typically like to contribute to solving their data challenges. After all, they know their data, and they know what they want to get out of it.

Federated approaches like the data mesh pattern seek to reconcile data governance and cost management considerations on one hand, with agility and responsiveness on the other hand. Leaders who want to make the most of their investments as well as catch the Generative AI wave should pay close attention to organizational design, not just technology platform choices.

Fabric is evolving at a pace not seen since Power BI’s early days almost a decade ago, which gives confidence that it will not just soon match its on-premises and Platform As A Service predecessors wherever there are still gaps – data source connectors come to mind – but also eventually supersede them with not just a much broader feature set, but perhaps more importantly at a much higher degree of integration. Fabric is a massive, long-term investment for Microsoft. Ignore it at your own peril!

For the purpose of readability, we’re presenting as a conclusion a simplified reference architecture for Fabric in the flowchart below. Is this an abstraction that hides some moving parts such as data gateways or the real-time part of the stack? Of course, we’ll readily admit that a detailed technical architecture will be a bit more complex. And we didn’t put icons for copilots because, well, they’re everywhere! But this visual remains a truthful skeleton of what many Fabric implementations will look like at a high level. Simple and integrated is the point, and everyone will benefit from Fabric’s streamlined approach.

15th September 2024

by iLink Digital

A Detailed Guide to Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) for Futuristic Growth

Introduction

In today’s cloud-driven business landscape, organizations are struggling to reduce their IT operation costs without compromising the quality of services. The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is designed to empower organizations to enter the cloud market seamlessly, eliminating the complexities of managing multiple vendors. It provides a robust end-to-end customer relationship management infrastructure, ensuring significant cost savings for organizations’ cloud licenses every month.

This blog explores how the Microsoft CSP program offers organizations a strategic advantage in navigating the complexities of cloud computing.

Understanding Microsoft CSP

Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider is a service provider that offers Microsoft cloud services such as Azure, Office 365, Microsoft 365, Power BI, Dynamics 365, and PowerApps. These partners act as trusted intermediaries between Microsoft and end-users, providing tailored solutions that meet specific business needs. Moreover, it plays a critical role in managing the long-term cloud provisioning and deployment for their customers.

Types of CSP Models

There are two primary CSP models.

Direct Bill Model
Indirect Reseller Model

Direct Bill Model: The direct bill model allows partners to purchase cloud services directly from Microsoft and sell them to their customers, managing the entire customer lifecycle. It is ideal for partners with established sales, billing and support infrastructure.

Advantages of the Direct CSP Model:

Value-Added Services and Support: Direct-bill partners can offer tailored solutions and enhanced customer support, including round-the-clock technical support.
Ownership of Customer Relationship: As a direct-bill partner, you maintain direct relationships with both your customers and Microsoft, enhancing control and flexibility.
Greater Control and Visibility: Direct billing and subscription management provides greater control over pricing, service offerings, and customer experience, empowering you to make better business decisions, forecasting, and budgeting.

Indirect Reseller Model

The indirect reseller model is a straightforward model that allows you to resell Microsoft Cloud subscriptions without the need to purchase directly from Microsoft. Instead, your indirect providers manage transactions with Microsoft. Additionally, they will collaborate with you on customer support and billing processes while offering essential support, including technical training, marketing resources, and financial assistance.

Advantages of the Indirect Reseller Model

Infrastructure Not Required: By choosing an indirect provider, you can eliminate the need for extensive infrastructure, significantly lowering the entry barriers for new and smaller businesses.
Accelerating Go-To-Market Activities: This model speeds up go-to-market activities with Microsoft cloud solutions, providing a swift response to dynamic market demand and customer needs with minimal operational complexity.
Reduced Operational Burdens: As the complex billing and subscription management systems are handled by indirect resellers, the operational costs and burdens for organizations are minimized. Hence, this model is ideal for small and medium businesses as they cannot afford the direct billing resources.

Benefits of Microsoft CSP

The CSP program offers several key benefits that enhance the partner experience:

Flexible Licensing, Billing, and Support Systems: The flexible billing and management options allow partners to offer customized billing solutions for organizations, including monthly or annual payment options based on their financial strength, enabling them to manage subscriptions and services more efficiently with less manual intervention.

Enhanced Customer Lifecycle Management: CSP partners have access to tools that help manage the entire customer lifecycle, from onboarding to support, facilitating a closer bond between Microsoft, its partners, and customers, fostering customer trust and loyalty.

Special Discounts and Incentives: The CSP program provides discounts or incentives for Azure subscriptions, aligning with organizations’ monthly consumption and enabling them to optimize their infrastructure costs effectively.

Integrated Tools and APIs: The program provides various integrated tools and APIs for managing services, enabling partners to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

Enhanced Scalability

The CSP program is designed to support organizations as they grow. With the ability to easily scale services based on demand, businesses can adapt to changing market conditions without incurring significant overhead costs.

Extensive Microsoft Resources and Support

CSP partners benefit from Microsoft’s wealth of resources and support, including training, marketing materials, and technical assistance. This support equips organizations to effectively sell and implement Microsoft solutions.

Simplified Compliance and Security

The built-in security features and compliance tools help organizations meet regulatory standards to provide robust security for protecting sensitive customer data.

CSP Partnership Requirement and Capabilities

Eligibility Requirements for Joining CSP

To become a partner of the Microsoft CSP program, partners must meet specific prerequisites, including:

Microsoft Partner Network ID: An active ID valid for the location the organization plans to operate.

Compliance and Security: Adherence to compliance with Microsoft’s standards and guidelines.

Operational Infrastructure: Adequate technical infrastructure for providing customer support, billing, and technical services (mainly for Direct CSPs).

Enrollment Steps

The enrollment process involves several detailed steps:

Choose a CSP Model: Decide whether to enroll as a direct bill partner or an indirect reseller.
Complete the Application: You must complete the necessary application forms on the Microsoft Partner Network portal.
Submit Required Documentation: Provide any required documentation to verify eligibility.
Receive Approval: Wait for Microsoft to review and approve the application. Becoming a direct CSP partner is quite lengthy and complicated, as it may take up to four months to get approval.
Onboard and Train: Once approved, partners should undergo training to familiarize themselves with Microsoft products and services.

Key Factors to Consider for Choosing the best Microsoft CSP model

To choose the best Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) model, organizations should consider several key factors, such as people, processes, and technology that align with their business needs and operational capabilities.

Assessing your Business Requirements: Organizations should consider various aspects when choosing the CSP model, including business size and scale, customer base and infrastructure capabilities, technical expertise, and long-term goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Hence, organizations should discuss with CSPs their licensing challenges, objectives, and current and future roadmaps to gain a deeper understanding of customer needs.

Evaluate Financial Implications: Determine which model provides better revenue opportunities for upselling and cross-selling additional services by analyzing the cost implications of both models, such as potential upfront investments and operational costs.

While the direct CSP model offers more autonomy and higher margins, the indirect CSP provides ease of operation with fewer entry barriers.

Best Practices and Recommendations for Successful CSP Partners

To thrive as a successful CSP partner, organizations should have a deeper understanding of Microsoft products and services. Besides that, focus on building strong relationships with customers through personalized support and solutions.

Leveraging Microsoft Resources for Business Growth

Organizations can leverage Microsoft resources such as training programs and technical and marketing support to significantly enhance their ability to reach a wider audience, fostering customer relationships through providing personalized services and regular communication.

Staying Informed and Compliant

CSP partners must stay updated on Microsoft’s policies and industry trends to ensure compliance and maintain a competitive edge.

Future Growth Opportunities with CSP Partnership

Emerging Trends in Cloud Services: The cloud service landscape is continually evolving, with emerging trends such as hybrid-cloud strategies, AI adoption, and increased focus on security. CSP partners

CSP partners can capitalize on these trends to offer innovative solutions to remain competitive.

Innovations and Advancements in Microsoft CSP: Microsoft is committed to enhancing the CSP program with new features and capabilities, providing partners with the tools they need to succeed in a competitive market.

Long-term Benefits of Partnering with Microsoft: Partnering with Microsoft through the CSP program offers long-term benefits, including access to cutting-edge technology, ongoing support, and a strong brand reputation.

Bottomline: Accelerate Your Business Growth with a Leading Microsoft CSP

Microsoft CSP offers a golden opportunity for partners for small and midsized businesses to enhance their cloud service offerings, striving to meet their evolving customers’ needs and drive unparalleled growth.

Being a trusted direct and Tier 1 Microsoft CSP, we demonstrated our ability to provide cloud and on-premises licenses and value-added services and help businesses of all sizes by managing billing and customers while ensuring 24*7 customer support. From deployment and billing to selling services, our skilled experts assist you in managing your entire Microsoft cloud life cycle.

4th September 2024

by iLink Digital

Transforming Hospital Operations: Presenting ServiceNow’s Now Assist for IT Operations and Patient Care

Have you ever considered how leading hospitals maintain seamless operations while ensuring exceptional patient care? Many healthcare organizations face significant challenges in running operations efficiently while meeting patient expectations. ServiceNow’s suite of products, powered by Generative AI, offers a robust solution to enhance both areas.

ServiceNow’s Now Assist simplifies managing regulatory and operational challenges by centralizing critical information, making it quick and easy for employees to access the data they need. This efficiency reduces the time spent searching for information and resolving issues, allowing teams to focus on their core responsibilities. With Now Assist, organizations have saved $5.5 million annually through incident avoidance and increased efficiency by 54%. Additionally, 56% of customers and employees have reported positive experiences using Now Assist.

In this blog, we will examine how ServiceNow’s Now Assist is revolutionizing IT operations for hospitals and healthcare providers. We will explore its capabilities, the potential for ITSM, ITOM, and CSM customization, success stories, and upcoming innovations so that the readers can gain a comprehensive understanding of these advancements.

Automating IT Operations with ServiceNow’s Now Assist

Introducing Now Assist!

Now Assist refers to generative AI-powered experiences on the Now Platform®, designed to enhance organizational productivity and efficiency significantly. By offering improved self-service capabilities, Now Assist empowers users to resolve issues independently through personalized suggestions and automated workflows, reducing reliance on IT support and accelerating problem-solving. Its generative AI engine also delivers faster answers and recommended actions by analyzing extensive data and providing precise, relevant solutions. This results in quicker decision-making and a more efficient organization overall.

How Now Assist Helps Workflow with AI Integration:

How Now Assist Addresses Key IT Challenges:

Hospitals and healthcare providers deal with several complex IT challenges. ServiceNow’s Now Assist is tailored to address these needs and here’s how it helps tackle some of the most pressing issues:

Complex IT Environments: Imagine a hospital where numerous systems such as electronic health records (EHR), medical imaging, and lab information systems are all connected and interdependent. Managing this intricate web can be overwhelming. Now Assist simplifies this by consolidating information into a unified platform. For instance, it can automatically integrate updates from various sources, reducing the need for manual data entry and enabling healthcare staff to focus on patient care rather than administrative tasks.

System Downtime: In a hospital setting, every second counts. Unplanned system downtime can disrupt critical services and delay patient treatment. Now Assist proactively monitors system health and alerts IT staff to potential issues before they escalate. For example, if a server handling patient records starts showing signs of failure, Now Assist can notify the IT team to take preventive action, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous patient care.

Hospital Incident Management: Dealing with IT incidents quickly and efficiently is crucial in a hospital environment. Traditional methods of incident management can at times be slow and error-prone, leading to extended downtime. Now Assist streamlines this process by automatically sorting and prioritizing support requests. For example, it can detect patterns in recurring incidents, helping IT teams to identify and resolve the root causes faster and more accurately.

Data Security: Protecting sensitive patient data is a top priority for healthcare providers. Now Assist enhances data security by continuously monitoring for potential vulnerabilities and compliance issues. For instance, if there’s an unauthorized access attempt or a configuration change that could lead to a data breach, Now Assist alerts the security team immediately, allowing them to take swift action to protect patient information.

How do ServiceNow transform IT Operations in Hospitals

In the realm of IT operations for hospitals and healthcare providers, IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) are essential for smooth functioning. ITSM focuses on effectively delivering and managing IT services, while ITOM ensures the IT infrastructure operates efficiently. Now Assist combines these concepts with AI-driven features, enabling hospitals to automate incident management, optimize resources, and maintain system reliability.

Let’s look at some of its core elements:

AI-Driven IT Incident Management: Now Assist uses AI to automate IT incident detection and resolution, minimizing downtime with predictive analytics and machine learning. A major hospital system that adopted AI-driven incident management saved over 700+ hours annually in risk management. This efficiency allows healthcare providers to focus more on patient care and less on IT issues.

Advanced Diagnostic Tools: Advanced diagnostic tools in Now Assist analyze system performance to identify potential failures before they impact operations. A leading medical center that implemented these tools recovered 1000s of hours of lost productive time by reducing system reset times to just 30 seconds. This solution dramatically cut downtime for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff, enhancing their user experience across workstations, mobile, and shared devices. Additionally, the integration of the ServiceNow Virtual Agent in platforms like Service Portal, Now Mobile, Teams, and Slack ensured immediate support and accessibility, allowing healthcare professionals to manage their workflows more efficiently and focus on delivering quality patient care.

Intelligent Ticketing System: The intelligent ticketing system within Now Assist uses Generative AI to categorize and prioritize support tickets, ensuring prompt attention to urgent issues. A healthcare provider that adopted this system saw a significant improvement in efficiency, with 16,000 users benefiting from faster response times and more effective resolution of their IT issues.

Data-Driven Insights: With actionable data-driven insights, Now Assist optimizes workflows and resource utilization, achieving a 25% reduction in incident response times. A leading firm teamed up with ServiceNow to develop a step-by-step IT improvement plan. This plan aimed to cut down on unexpected downtime, make reports better and keep key clinical applications running smoothly. The program focused on understanding the client’s current and old IT systems through data insights, removing outdated parts and customizations that slow down performance and hinder automation.

Now Assist in Virtual Agent: For a leading client, Now Assist, integrated into ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent, has powered over 1.5 million interactions in the past five years, achieving a 59% employee self-solve rate. This highlights Now Assist’s effectiveness in enhancing self-service, leading to faster resolutions, reduced IT workload, and improved user satisfaction. Through analytics-driven optimization, Now Assist ensures the portal operates smoothly, boosting efficiency and satisfaction across the organization.

Transforming Patient Interactions & Customer Service with Now Assist’s CSM Capabilities.

The demand for improved patient interactions and experiences is growing, with 75% of patients now expecting seamless and personalized communication from their healthcare providers. Despite this, challenges such as inconsistent communication, long response times, and difficulty accessing information continue to hinder effective care.

How does a hospital/provider benefit from ServiceNow CSM

Imagine a world where every patient query is addressed almost instantly. With ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management (CSM), this is becoming a reality. Their AI-powered tools use natural language processing to understand and respond to patient needs quickly and accurately. Whether it’s handling appointment requests, providing real-time updates, or answering common questions, these solutions streamline interactions and make communication smoother. Its capabilities include:

Success Stories of ITSM, ITOM, and CSM in Hospitals

A Healthcare Insurance Provider saved over 700 hours and $200,000 with ITSM

A government-sponsored healthcare organization faced tight deadlines for member updates and claims across multiple states, risking hefty fines for missed deadlines. They implemented an advanced IT operations management platform, identifying and resolving delays, reducing failures from several days weekly to zero. They also developed a centralized operations intake portal, replacing inefficient emails and SharePoint with a unified system for service requests. This portal tracked tasks against SLAs for timely resolutions.

The platform further automated incident management, proactively addressing issues before they impacted users. As a result, the organization saved over 700 hours annually in risk management, saved $200,000 by aligning service and regulatory issues, and consolidated 35 project data stores, improving compliance, report generation, and overall service delivery.

Improving Caregiver Experience with 400K Hours of Care Optimized Per Month

By adopting ServiceNow ITSM and ITOM, organisations can reduce the onboarding process from weeks to days, optimize 400,000 hours of care each month, and efficiently support 1,400 new hires.

You can also use ServiceNow’s App Engine to create custom low-code apps. For example, a Medication Administration App can digitize medication records, minimizing errors and speeding up documentation. A patient notification app sends reminders for upcoming visits, enhancing patient satisfaction.

Additionally, an app for managing hospice expenses replaces manual spreadsheets and email, streamlining the process for greater accuracy and efficiency.

ServiceNow Brings Order to a Complex Health System Handling 3.5M Clinical Visits

In a sprawling health system managing multiple hospitals and thousands of healthcare providers, implementing ServiceNow delivered impressive results for a renowned organisation:

11 Hospitals

3,200 Physicians

3.5 million Clinical Visits

ServiceNow’s IT Service Management and Project Portfolio Management standardized operations and streamlined the onboarding of new facilities. Application Portfolio Management rationalized the software landscape, while IT Operations Management and HR Service Delivery further optimized processes.

Outlook and Innovations for Hospitals

The future of hospital IT is shaped by advanced tools and innovations designed to enhance operational efficiency and patient care. Key developments in this space include:

AI-Driven IT Operations: Leveraging AI and machine learning for predictive analytics and automated incident management, reducing downtime and improving system reliability.

GenAI Integrated IT Solutions: Generative AI will likely dominate, providing hospitals with tools to enhance predictive analytics, automate complex workflows, and improve patient interactions.

Project Portfolio Management (PPM): PPM tools facilitate the efficient management of hospital projects, from infrastructure upgrades to new technology implementations, aligning projects with strategic goals.

Application Portfolio Management (APM): APM solutions will rationalize and optimize the software landscape, eliminating redundancies and ensuring alignment with hospital needs.

HR Service Delivery: Enhancements in HR service delivery will streamline employee onboarding, benefits management, and other HR functions, thus improving overall staff efficiency and satisfaction.

Conclusion:

In summary, ServiceNow’s GenAI-powered Now Assist is enhancing hospital operations by improving IT workflows, reducing downtime, and optimizing resource management. We also examined how these advancements positively impact patient care through ITSM, ITOM, and CSM and reviewed some success stories.

If you’re considering implementing ServiceNow solutions to elevate your healthcare organization, iLink Digital is here to guide you. This isn’t just a promise—we’ve spent over 20 years as healthcare experts, delivering IT services to healthcare and life sciences (HLS) clients. As a ServiceNow partner, we’ve successfully implemented solutions for a Fortune 15 company achieving incredible results. Our custom solutions are designed to enhance patient engagement, streamline case management, and optimize care delivery. Take the first step towards a smarter, more efficient healthcare system with iLink Digital today!

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26th August 2024

by iLink Digital

How Generative AI is Transforming Application Modernization?

Introduction

According to the RedHat survey, 95% of respondents consider application modernization as a critical priority for their organization’s success. Most of the forward-thinking organizations are already reaping the benefits of scalability, improved customer experience, and competitive advantage.

However, with an increasingly complex IT landscape, high rising costs, limited skills, and execution complexities, there is a pressing need to adopt different approach and technology altogether to drive innovation. This is where Generative AI steps in, serving as a catalyst for enhancing efficiency, precision, and speed of the application modernization.

This blog delves into how the Generative AI revolutionizes the application modernization across the entire SDLC, offering a holistic and agile transformation approach, making application development more scalable and efficient than ever before.

Generative AI: A Contemporary Catalyst for Application Modernization

“According to Avasant research, enterprises and service providers are scouting ways to leverage generative AI in application modernization.”

From automating code generation to successfully providing intelligent design suggestions, Generative AI holds immense potential to revolutionize application modernization across industries and unlock new possibilities for growth and innovation. It significantly speeds up modernization, improves code quality, and enhances user experience, enabling organizations with continuous improvement capabilities. This transformative technology bridges the gap between conceptualization and creation, positioning itself as an essential tool in modern software development.

Code Refactoring

Modernizing legacy applications presents significant challenges due to their complex and outdated code structures. Manually rewriting these codes can be tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors, often leading to frustration and delays in project timelines.

Generative AI has come to the rescue by analyzing and understanding existing codebases, offering a comprehensive assessment of current applications. Leveraging advanced machine algorithms helps generate refactored and optimized code automatically that aligns with our project requirements and coding standards, significantly improving the application performance, readability, and maintainability. As a result, businesses can modernize their applications without the need to rewrite entire codebases, significantly saving time and reducing manual intervention.

Cross-platform Compatibility

Considering the intricacies of cross-platform compatibility, GenAI can generate code that seamlessly adapt to diverse environments such as mobile, web, or desktop applications, reducing the manual intervention. It further analyses the code and suggests platform-specific adjustments, optimizing the UI elements that bridges compatibility gaps, ensuring a smooth cross-platform experience.

Integrating Microservice Design Assistance

The transition from monolithic to microservices architecture represents a significant paradigm shift, presenting challenges such as defining optimal service boundaries and ensuring effective inter-service communication across the network. Generative AI plays a crucial role in this transformation by facilitating the decomposition of monolithic applications into microservices.

It analyzes dependencies and usage patterns to identify potential issues, recommend optimal service boundaries, and establish effective communication protocols. This ensures a smooth migration to a microservices architecture, enabling organizations to harness the benefits of scalability, agility, and resilience while minimizing disruption during the transition.

Role of Generative AI in Software Development Life Cycle

Application modernization is at the forefront of enterprises’ pursuit of investment across industries. This process involves several steps, each with a specific set of deliverables that help successfully modernize legacy applications.

“79% of responding executives say using generative AI in app modernization projects will increase business agility.”

Let us explore at how GenAI is accelerating the development of each phase of SDLC.

Discovery

Generative AI significantly reduces the reliance on extensive SMEs. It excels in use cases such as code analysis, extracting insights from outdated documents, and correlating domain functionalities with code and data. This facilitates effective decomposition, event-storming, and domain-driven design. By providing teams with enhanced visibility into legacy applications and their dependencies, generative AI mitigates risks and boosts the efficiency of the discovery and design phases.

Planning and Requirements Gathering

User Story Generation: GenAI, powered by LLMs, can craft well-defined user stories that accurately reflect user expectations. GenAI can suggest potential functionalities and roadmaps by analyzing the project scope, complexities, historical data, and dependency patterns. Generative AI is a valuable tool for correlating application portfolio details with discovered dependencies, making planning exercises more informed and adaptable.

Defining Acceptance Criteria: Acceptance criteria play a pivotal role in Agile methodologies, defining the conditions under which a user story is considered complete. Generative AI can help generate accurate and measurable acceptance criteria based on the user stories and planned features on the roadmap. By analyzing similar completed projects and industry standards, it can suggest acceptance criteria, ensuring that the functionality meets user expectations.

Requirements Analysis with Gen AI: Gen AI can analyze your requirements to identify inconsistencies, missing information, and potential risks. It facilitates discussions and collaborative reviews within your team by providing a platform for discussing and refining acceptance criteria. It can aggregate feedback from various stakeholders, ensuring that the criteria aligned with user requirements, ensuring a solid foundation for the development process.

By analyzing requirements and acceptance criteria, Generative AI can highlight potential risks and ambiguities that may affect the development process. This proactive approach allows teams to address issues early, reducing the likelihood of costly changes later in the project.

Design and Development

Modernizing UI Design

Generative AI can automatically generate new UI elements, mock-ups, styles, and layouts, prototypes, and frameworks based on user personas and modern design practices, making UI modernization user-optimized. It can build UI code, including the back-end for front-end (BFF) patterns, by analyzing images to generate code compatible with UI design. It alleviates the burden on designers and ensures a more intuitive interface for users.

Intelligent Code Generation

According to Mckinsey Study, “Generative AI allows developers to complete complex tasks up to two times faster.”

Beyond refactoring, generative AI can generate new code snippets with the natural language inputs by analyzing learning patterns from existing code. This intelligent code generation seamlessly integrates into existing infrastructure, enhances code quality and functionality, automates the creation of boilerplate code, unit tests, and API documentation, enabling developers to dedicate their expertise on complex tasks.

Additionally, GenAI can generate related artifacts such as security design points, pipeline code/configurations, and Infrastructure as Code (IAC) based on insights from legacy code or Swagger definitions. It orchestrates these outputs using predefined application reference architectures, ensuring consistency and efficiency.         

Testing and Deployment

Test Case Generation

Debugging legacy codes often feels like finding a needle in a haystack due to a lack of understanding of the code’s purpose and potential hidden dependencies.

Imagine an intelligent assistant can leverage Gen AI can automatically generate comprehensive test cases and codes by analyzing code and requirements, significantly improving the quality while reducing the risk of missed bugs from the testing phase, ensuring applications remain robust and reliable throughout the SDLC.

Maintenance & Support

Unlike traditional debugging tools that rely on solely known patterns and manual inputs, Generative AI can continuously monitor the performance of deployed applications by analyzing system behavior, logs, and code to identify anomalies and suggest possible fixes, enabling testers to predict and promptly resolve issues before they escalate, ensuring smooth and secure deployments.  It can also assist in reactive approaches like automated bug fixing and root cause analysis. The ability to generate inputs for configuration management and change management streamlines release processes. By drawing insights from release notes, generative AI enhances the efficiency of security review and approval processes.

Human-AI Collaboration is Key: While GenAI offers tangible benefits across SDLC, it is not a replacement for human expertise where it can only augment developers’ capabilities. Developers still need to review and refine the generated code and outputs aligned with project requirements and maintain code quality.

Potential Benefits of Generative AI for Application Modernization

As generative AI continues to advance, organizations that leverage its capabilities early will experience more significant benefits and drive exceptional growth. Generative AI is not merely a tool but a key catalyst for enhancing greater efficiencies and fostering innovations across various sectors.

Let’s explore the potential benefits of GenAI in application modernization:

Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity: McKinsey’s study reveals that “Developers using Generative AI to perform complex tasks were 25 to 30% more likely to complete those tasks within the time frame”.

GenAI automates core repetitive tasks, enabling developers to focus on complex problem-solving and strategic tasks, leading to faster development cycles.

Reduced costs and time-to-market: Generative AI automates various tasks, streamlining the development process and significantly reducing time and associated costs. This allows for faster time to market and quicker return on investment.

Dynamic Scalability Optimization: Generative AI helps optimize code for dynamic scaling by analyzing application workloads and performance data, ensuring effective resource utilization and performance of underlying architecture.

Delivering Excellence: Improved Product Quality: Generative AI reduces the likelihood of errors by generating high-quality code and identifying potential missing features and issues early on, resulting in delivering more efficient and reliable product.

Security Enhancement: GenAI can recommend secure coding practices by detecting vulnerabilities in legacy code, eventually preventing data breaches and significantly boosting application security.

Automated Documentation Maintenance: GenAI streamlines documentation and unlock new level of efficiency and agility in SDLC.  It ensures the documentation is updated in real-time as the code changes throughout modernization, making the documentation correct and aligned with the evolving codebase.

Bottomline

Generative AI ushers in a new era of application modernization. While Generative AI’s role in software development is still an evolving field, the potential is enormous, unlocking innovation rather than merely addressing outdated challenges. Generative AI serves as a force multiplier, empowering teams to tackle monolithic systems, seamlessly migrate to cloud environments, and breathe new life into legacy applications, making them more agile, scalable, and efficient.

With more than two decades of experience in product engineering and digital experience services, we leverage various Gen AI-driven modernization accelerators to expedite the different phases of SDLC. This blog merely skims the surface of the possibilities that GenAI offers for application modernization. To learn more about how we can modernize your applications with GenAI, connect with us!

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