In fact, software quality remains one of the main concerns for companies and is therefore the focus of most investment and effort. Between 30% and 40% of technology spending in large organisations is on application development and maintenance. Between 30% and 40% of technology spending in large organisations is on application development and maintenance. And the performance level of these applications has a direct impact on the infrastructures that, for their part, account for between 15% and 25% of expenditure.
According to the data we handle at Orizon, currently 50% of all technical components involve some element of poor practice and it is even more alarming that, when software is modified or updated, most poor practices remain because they are not identified and there are no mechanisms in place to detect and modify them.
If we focus specifically on software development and maintenance in the financial sector, the opportunities for improvement are enormous. According to the data we handle at Orizon, currently 50% of all technical components involve some element of poor practice and it is even more alarming that, when software is modified or updated, most poor practices remain because they are not identified and there are no mechanisms in place to detect and modify them.
There are other key indicators, some vital for the banking business, such as cost and response time, which show that the situation can be substantially improved. Currently, in the financial sector, software changes due to new versions cause an average increase in infrastructure consumption costs of 6% and software changes in production lengthen response times in 16% of operations, with the consequent impact on the user experience.
Likewise, another key indicator is compliance with service level agreements (SLAs), and here too there is considerable room for improvement. Suffice it to say that software uploads can mean, over a one-year period, up to 9% more breaches of SLAs.
All these problems have a common cause, which is that developments are not conducted from a performance point of view. Changing this situation requires companies to give software development and maintenance the same priority they give to other issues such as security. Just as a Security Operations Centre (SOC) is key to business operations and continuity, organisations must also internalise the need for a Performance Operation Centre (POC) – Technical Performance Office, such as BOA (Boost & Optimise Applications).
Six benefits offered by a Performance Operations Centre
Reasons why a Performance Operations Centre – Technical Performance Office is critical for businesses include:
1. Complete, unified and detailed view of the operation of the applications and their impact on the business. It is about knowing for sure to what extent the technology that supports the operation works properly and at full performance. This view is especially important in an area such as software development and maintenance, where outsourcing prevails, as providers, faced with the acceleration of innovation cycles and the demand for an ever-shorter time-to-market, may sacrifice the importance of quality in favour of other criteria such as speed.
2. Move from monitoring to action. Despite the availability of various monitoring tools, there are many organisations whose knowledge of what is happening in their different technological environments (mainframe, distributed, cloud, etc.) is limited, partial or isolated. As a result, they lack real, complete and detailed knowledge of the dynamic behaviour of the software and, therefore, their decision-making is being performed blind or, in the best cases, is reactive. A performance centre like BOA allows a proactive monitoring and optimisation to be carried out without leaving the platform and in an increasingly automated way.
3. Eliminate cost overruns. Without a complete, unified and detailed view of the impact of technology on the business, and without the ability to proactively optimise, companies incur significant cost overruns as a result of hidden problems and inefficiencies in their systems and applications. These problems and inefficiencies go unnoticed or are not controlled by the external providers, and the company, when it does not have control either, is unknowingly forced to bear cost overruns that, in our experience, are around 15% of the technology investments (both in infrastructure costs and in cost overruns resulting from repeated software modification).
4. Promote a performance culture. Our core vision of performance involves a methodology, DevPerOps, which introduces the concept of performance into the DevOps cycle, that is, performance becomes a core principle of the simultaneous and coordinated work of development and operations. This methodology not only contributes to providing IT teams with a vision of the business, but also allows the different operational areas, starting with management, to understand the impact that technology and technology-related decisions have in terms of business, such as operating costs, user experience, innovation capacity, etc.
5. Encourage continuous improvement. A performance centre acts as an incentive for continuous improvement because when IT areas and external providers perceive that they are being monitored and measured, they are aware that they are under continuous evaluation and the targets that were previously seen as final, are now targets to be constantly strived for.
For the customer, this monitoring can be displayed in the form of diagrams and rankings that allow a continuous evaluation, in business terms (delivery times, correction speed, impact on infrastructure consumption, etc.), of the work of IT and third-party providers. Moreover, and this point is crucial, this way of doing things contributes to the internalisation by the entire organisation of a performance culture focused on continuous improvement.
6. Implement an excellence-based management model. Beyond the industry platitudes, measuring the situation and having the tools to change it entails having an objective and rational management model, with a real impact on IT operations but, above all, with an impact on the operating account and on the meeting of operational and strategic targets. Ensuring that technology works as it should in terms of effectiveness and efficiency implies changing the rules of the IT management game and tackling the issue of the value of technology head-on.
