CA Technologies sees big opportunities across Application Program Interface (API), DevOps and agile technologies in the APAC market, with India leading the growth momentum. In his recent visit to India, Martin Mackay, who joined CA Technologies as the President and General Manager, APJ, in December, explains why these technologies are the central part of any digital transformation and what’s driving CIOs to increasingly adopt these practices in order to thrive in the application economy. Excerpts.
CXOToday: How does DevOps-first strategy facilitate the digital transformation of an enterprise?
Martin Mackay: If Agile is about creating the ideas, DevOps is about converting those ideas into outcomes. The key components of the DevOps suite are around the continuous delivery, including those around the service virtualization and automated testing and automated release combined with application performance analytics. Now, how does it facilitate transformation? It enables you get software to market quicker so as to improve the customer experience. Research shows the customers’ brand loyalty is driven more by the experience than by the actual product. If the experience is poor, your customer will go elsewhere in no time. It is here the DevOps as a practice, enables you to integrate the concept, quality and customer insights – all in one.
CXOToday: Do you see more Indian companies cozying to API management? What’s driving enterprises to reap benefits from API?
Martin Mackay: CA Technologies explains API technologies as a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications. A recent global study reveals that a majority of surveyed organizations in India recognize the importance of APIs in business growth. According to the study, 85 percent of the Indian firms are confident in the effectiveness of APIs in helping them to differentiate from the competition. This confidence level exhibited by the Indian firms is the highest in APJ, and higher than the average APJ response of 55 percent.
APIs are crucial to success in the application economy. They empower enterprises to quickly modernize legacy architectures, add value to existing IT assets and create new product opportunities or revenue streams.
However, simply using APIs is not enough. The full lifecycle approach to API management requires a wide and complex range of capabilities. It demands the ability to connect legacy and current systems; rapidly create APIs in order to safely expose data; integrate this with back-end data and legacy apps; protect these integrations with the right levels of security; accelerate mobile development; and unlock the value of the resulting digital ecosystems through analytics and monetization. Once this is understood, companies of all sizes, in all sectors, can use APIs to level the competitive playing field, and cope better with the rising volume, scale and volatility of customer-facing apps.
CXOToday: How do you see machine learning and big data shaping IT operations analytics and in turn the enterprise technology space?
Martin Mackay: At this stage, we are trying to bake machine learning and big data into our own applications. In fact, as a part of the change of culture at CA we have created our own incubation center where we have a series of startups that are developing products that will eventually get integrated into our products. This is a great source of innovation. The entire operation is run by our Chief Technology Officer. Our product Jarvis was developed as a part of this incubation and has been integrated into our applications analytics experience product. It’s a key part of our strategy to integrate the Jarvis analytics platform into every product. This will facilitate automation and in turn will enhance quality and enable productivity.
CXOToday: How does the India market contribute to your global goals?
Martin Mackay: Disruption driven by IT and software is happening across the globe. And India, a key component of CAs overall strategy, is not far behind. In fact, many Indian companies are ahead of their competitors globally when it comes to adoption of technologies and using software for servicing customers, improving operational efficiencies, or creating new business models. India is a big growth engine for us in APJ and as a consequence, because APJ is the fastest growing region in CA.
CXOToday: What kind of innovation can the enterprise customer expect from CA over the next 12 months?
Martin Mackay: There are three things that we are currently focusing on. The first is the accelerator or incubation program, where we are allowing organizations, especially the startups to devote more time to create a world-class product. By providing special access to our demos, expertise, and sales, we aim to build a supportive innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem across the globe.
The second is integrating the existing capabilities that we have by adding new functionality. Our product quality has improved dramatically over the last couple of years based on statistical analysis and customer anecdotal feedback and we will continue to invest in product quality. Finally, building a strong go-to-market strategy, by taking the modern software factory message out to customers in a consistent and robust fashion and that will differentiate. In other words, innovation is not just in product but in culture and how we interact with the market.
CXOToday: What would be your advice to CIOs as they walk through the digital journey in their organization?
Martin Mackay: Well, digital transformation is everything and it’s time every organization should get this message. They should however, get the message right. They should know digital transformation journey is not just about technology; It is a combination of culture, process and enabling technology. And it is here that organizations like CA can make your digital transformation experiences more exciting, more relevant and fun.