Envisioning A Software Distribution Hub
Modern manufacturing is a direct consequence of a forced transformationa transformation
resulting from changing economics and massive product and supply chain complexity.
The same sort of transformation is taking place today in enterprise ITforced by similar challenges and following a very similar arc.
Manufacturing has evolved from manual to automated, ad hoc to repeatable, from art to science. Manufacturing has been forced to industrialize. Aiding in the effort are product lifecycle and supply chain management tools for streamlining manufacturing process and linking together previously isolated stages in the value chain.
Several factors drive manufacturing complexity:
Many inputsraw materials and product sub-assemblies are sourced through direct and indirect means. Inputs must be made available for production runs.
Many actorseach phase of the manufacturing process involves many different roles and individuals who must work in harmony to produce the end product.
Massive scalethe volume of units shipped and diversity of product lines drive massive scale in the volume of raw materials, work in process and finished goods.
Constant changechanges in the specification and availability of inputs must be communicated and propagated downstream, while changes in demand are communicated and propagated upstream.
Frequent specializationend products must be tweaked, tailored and localized to satisfy diverse market requirements.
Manufacturing is a useful analogy for the transformation taking place in enterprise IT. After all, these same challengesmany inputs, many actors, massive scale, constant change and frequent specializationcould just as easily describe the state of IT today.
Manufacturers have addressed manufacturing complexity by creating a centralized infrastructure for controlled reuse of standardized components, collaboration between roles, and automation of key processes. They have created, in effect, a hub that automates and streamlines how inputs become outputs in a way that is efficient and scalable and based on principles of standardization and reuse. They have integrated these standardized components all the way back through the supply chain.
IT has no such hub today, relying instead on independent, often duplicative efforts and disconnected, fragmented processes to construct and maintain a system.
For IT today, scale and change are compounding at the same time budgets contract and business line expectations increase. IT is undergoing a forced transformationfrom art to sciencemuch like manufacturing organizations of the past.
The transformation for enterprise IT should follow a similar path, where a centralized hub becomes the control infrastructure for managing IT system construction and change. This hub becomes the basis for managing and reusing standardized system componentscomponents that are integrated back through the software supply chain.
You may think of this like a Rubiks Cube, where the colored blocks represent reusable software components whichwhen combinedrepresent a new system.
These components are managed centrally and reused liberally to construct new systems. All the components and the systems themselves are deeply modeled and version controlled, ensuring that theyre well-defined and controlled throughout their lifecycle. When updates are made to the components, change is flowed through the hub and cascaded en masse to hundreds or thousands of deployed systems.
With a software distribution hub, key challenges for IT become surmountable:
Many inputssystem software components are standardized and versioned, giving IT control over what software is put into production. The software supply chain is fully integrated from the deployed business services all the way back to the original sources of the enabling softwarecustom, commercial and open source. Changes to software and configurations flow seamlessly from the sources to the consuming systems.
Many actorsrather than duplicating efforts, working at cross-purposes and creating conflicts in production environments, all contributors to the IT value chain are in perfect coordination. Standardized components are reused, not recreated. Where theyre reused is tracked. Changes to these componentsin dev, test or production; by OS, middleware or application teams; or by third party software providersare seamlessly propagated from their source, through the hub, and into production.
Massive scaletraditionally, adding systems meant adding people. With the software distribution hub, scale can grow at near zero marginal cost. Reuse of system components means massive leverage on the management of software in production.
Constant changewith change flowing through the hub, introducing change at any layer of the stack is simple, free of conflict and reversible. Changes to custom, commercial or open source softwareor to configurations or business service definitionsseamlessly flow from their source to their destination.
Frequent specializationone-size-fits-all gives way to customized systems, as standardized components are mixed and matched to address diverse business requirements. Because these components are controlled and managed centrally, theres no added management overhead for this sort of system diversity.
Legacy manufacturing processes were forced to transform under the weight of complexity, scale and changing economic conditions. The same transformationby the same forcesis underway for enterprise IT.
Todays approaches are too slow, costly and chaotic to address modern system complexity and IT budgets. The only viable solution is a new approacha distribution hub, with deep integration from the business service back through the software supply chainthat takes the cost and complexity out of managing IT environments in an age of massive scale, accelerating change, and elusive op ex budgets.
by: Jake Sorofman
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