December 20179 A HUGE ADVANTAGE OF PLATFORMS IS THAT THEY STAY CURRENTlargest enterprises now need to acknowledge the futility of attempting to establish internal application platforms in competition with the market leading cloud services. The focus needs to shift to becoming an intelligent consumer of cloud services to drive innovation. Paradoxically, embracing this massive centralisation liberates enterprises to devolve innovation.In my department we call this approach Platform+Agile. This is founded on a `cloud first' policy stance based on strategic adoption of several of the market leading cloud service platforms. Platforms enable more agile approaches to projects because most of the required functionality already exists. A new business system is created by configuring a platform which is already operationally proven, trusted and sustainable ­ rather than procuring and customising new (relatively unknown) technologies and applications.A huge advantage of platforms is that they stay current. The shared platform model and the pooled investment enabled by large global customer bases means that the functionality, performance and security of the platforms are being continuously modernised. As a consumer, the enterprise ICT department is just `going along for the ride' rather than having to invest in building and sustaining its own platforms.A platform-centric approach also enables in-house ICT teams to develop deep-repeat expertise in the platforms and avoid unnecessary and risky application-by-application `mad science experiment' procurements (which often amount to risky leaps of faith to procure new and unfamiliar technologies and counter-party relationships). Better the devil you know. My team has delivered an impressive portfolio of projects over the past two years using the Microsoft Azure, and Salesforce platforms, which has enabled the ICT department to `get back its mojo'. Small systems can be delivered in as little as six weeks, larger more integrated applications in six months. No worries!I summarize these more agile mindsets, methods and platforms as `Platform+Agile' to emphasize the point that the new platforms are an enabler of more agile ways of building new business systems. A platform enables agility. It accelerates project start-up and project delivery. With a minimum of pragmatic technical and information architecture thinking, and clever use of APIs, the Platform+Agile approach also enables satisfactory systems integration.The successful enterprises of the future will be those that embrace the integration vs differentiation contradiction that is inherent in proliferative innovation. Sustainable innovation requires both­--which Platform+Agile can deliver. Dr. Steve Hodgkinson
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