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Outside-in — An Agile Methodology or a Radical Approach to Mobility?

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face="Verdana, sans-serif"> style="font-style: normal;">Andy

Mulholland, CTO,
color="#0000ff"> face="Verdana, sans-serif"> style="font-style: normal;">Capgemini face="Verdana, sans-serif">





The
underlying theory behind outside-in software is that to create

successful software, you must have a clear understanding of the goals

and motivations of your stakeholders. Your ultimate goal is to

produce software that is highly
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumability"> face="Times New Roman, serif">consumable face="Times New Roman, serif">

and meets/exceeds the needs of your client.

face="Times New Roman, serif">If

you extend this thought further, and really think about what those

business people with iPads, smartphones or Android tablets are doing

then the clear answer is it's not IT as we define it today. The

first point is that they are not looking to connect to, and use, the

existing enterprise applications beyond email, no instead they want

to participate in external communities, use the Web in its broadest

sense for real-time information, and consume selected services from

'App Shops', possibly even generate completely new business

activities on Amazon Web Services. All activities which focus on

interaction with people, process and real-time data to use a phrase

often associated with mobility and clouds but more often with

real-time data.

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face="Times New Roman, serif">Most

importantly, these activities are centered outside the enterprise,

outside the firewall, and outside the traditional enterprise

application technology of IT, with only a few activities requiring

connection 'inside' the enterprise i.e. mobility in the full

sense of the word can be described as 'outside-in'. The primary

focus and value comes from external or activities 'outside' the

enterprise and there is a limited secondary value around connecting

'inside' the enterprise.

face="Times New Roman, serif">Conversely,

the activities of enterprise IT can be defined as 'inside-out' as

they start, and are focused on activities 'inside' the enterprise

and reach towards the outer edge with only a few activities requiring

'outside' access i.e. use of the Internet and Web. The key point

of this important insight is the question; exactly why are we trying

to deliver this new 'outside' world of business use from the

'inside' with all the attendant issues? Even more importantly,

are we failing to recognize that additionally the enabling technology

is radically different as well? The 'inside-out' model of

traditional IT is around monolithic enterprise applications using

client-server to support a close-coupled, state-full, or

data-centric, deterministic environment whereas the 'outside-in'

is based on Internet Web architecture characterized as loose-coupled,

stateless and non-deterministic.

face="Times New Roman, serif">Using

a real client example from last week helps to make this clear; it was

the operating authority of a major airport, and in the airline

industry there have been several announcements of airlines deploying

large numbers of tablets or smartphones to improve 'operating

efficiency' to frontline staff. In plain language this means

dealing with the many unplanned events, from missing passengers to

lost luggage, finding the passenger steps to replenishing food and

drink, etc for a last minute change of the gate an aircraft arrives

at etc. The existing 'inside-out' IT systems of all the various

members of this ecosystem, airport operator, airlines, baggage

handler, food services, etc, etc each show face="Times New Roman, serif">separately face="Times New Roman, serif">

their planned activity to their staff via their secure enterprise.

The data comes from the central processing out to the edge of the

enterprise in the form of structured non real-time information

delivered securely within the 'firewall', or boundaries of their

enterprise IT operations.

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face="Times New Roman, serif">The

operational improvement challenge is that in the 'real' world a

series of unforeseen events occur that, to be solved, require the

staff of the organizations involved to interact face="Times New Roman, serif">together face="Times New Roman, serif">

in a unique way to suit each event. The better any business can do

this the higher their customer satisfaction, and most likely the

lower the costs by optimizing each circumstance. In the Netherlands

we have implemented the Information

Pool,

a nationwide

facility which allows the agencies involved in responding to a crisis

to share information with each other in real-time. Before this, the

crisis management systems of the various emergency services, public

authorities and private sector organizations were often not

connected. Each party ran its own '
face="Times New Roman, serif">inside-out face="Times New Roman, serif">'

IT systems, and the digital flow of information stopped at the

firewall, leaving staff on the frontline to share the relevant data

with their counterparts across organizational boundaries, and

coordinate a response. The Information

Pool
has replaced this

with an
'outside-in'

approach in which content —
from

impact

assessments to aerial photos, location coordinates and risk

charts
face="Times New Roman, serif">

is sent to a pool beyond

the boundaries of the contributing organizations, and partners see

what is relevant to them, depending on what data from that pool they

have subscribed to. Now the agencies can collaborate more easily,

because the traditional barrier between inside and out no longer

prevents each player from seeing the full picture.

face="Times New Roman, serif">This

is highly people-centric, using real-time data ending in a 'work

around' solution, or process, to suit the circumstances. Most

importantly, it doesn't require any of the people to be present in

each other's existing enterprise IT systems, though when the crisis

is finally resolved the final set of data is logged in the existing

IT systems of each company or agency. This is the 'outside-in'

view; the activity occurs 'outside' the enterprise and only a

limited amount of access is required to be passed 'in' to the

enterprise's secure IT environment.

face="Times New Roman, serif">The

new technologies of mobility, big data and clouds allow this to be

achieved without infringing the enterprise security model only if we

apply them in a very different way. Current good practice is to

create and manage a comprehensive and cohesive IT environment within

a secure boundary, and, for the tight coupled, state-full

data-centric client-server applications this is entirely correct.

But, in the examples, given the challenge of permitting unknown

operational staff and networks working in an unstructured way, to

enter this controlled and structured world in a secure manner is

huge.

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face="Times New Roman, serif">As

a result the rapid and constantly changing introduction of new types

of 'apps' or 'services' that allow interaction through social

and collaborative tools, the huge amounts of data to be pooled, and

the new app-based processes to be deployed around this new generation

of 'front office' business requirements is a struggle to

accommodate. But only if we insist that we must satisfy these

existing criteria drawn up for a completely different set of business

and technology reasons.

face="Times New Roman, serif">In

adopting an 'outside-in' approach the relevant users and devices

are moved outside the existing secure IT environment, and in the case

of the airport operations will co-exist together on a cloud that

permits loose-coupled, stateless, consumption of 'services'

supported from this shared cloud. The periodic need to access email,

and a handful of enterprise applications can be handled with true

thin clients working from 'outside-in', thus preventing the data,

system, or application from being vulnerable in the same way as if

these devices and users were working from 'inside-out' and

requiring everything to be 'brought inside' the secure zone. This

model can also accommodate customers bringing their own devices,

agile business and other ways that the requirement for a new business

model is expressed.

' face="Times New Roman, serif">Outside-in'

is a completely different way of thinking about the requirement,

delivery and deployment model, but given that this is a completely

new generation of technologies that are used in a completely

different way by business we should expect that? After all, the last

big shift to using PC network technology changed every aspect of the

mini computer requirement, delivery and deployment model in the early

1990s!! We simply need to reflect on that definition from the agile

community and realize that we are working from the perspective of

people in shared ecosystems outside and not from the perspective of

data and systems inside. Actually we will need both, which brings me

to the interesting comment from Forrester about the rising importance

of gateways as the connection mechanism between the two environments.

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This same thinking impacts

how we are seeing business information change from an ' face="Times New Roman, serif">inside-out'

delivery of historical analytical reporting based on structured data,

to an 'outside-in'

reaction to new data captured from events and activities that is

unstructured and untrusted. In future blogs I intend to explore some

of these aspects.









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