The International Data Corporation’s (IDC)  Worldwide Semi-annual Digital Transformation Spending Guide focused on looking at DX within business practices, products, and organisations.

A fast-growing sector

Program vice president with IDC’s Customer Insights and Analysis Group, Eileen Smith, believes that in the next four years, worldwide technology investments will total over $7.4 trillion (£ 5.7 trillion).

She says: “Industries have achieved varying levels of maturity to date and continue to pursue their DX objectives. The financial services sector will see the fastest overall growth with the banking, insurance, and security and investment services industries each delivering CAGRs of more than 19% over the forecast period. The distribution and services sector which includes industries like retail and professional services will also outpace the overall market with an 18.0% CAGR while public sector spending growth will match the overall market at 17.1%.”

The largest amount of spending will come from discrete and process manufacturing, the report forecasts, which will account for nearly 30% of the worldwide total. These industries include automatic operations, root cause and robotic manufacturing.  

Not a surprise

Alex Guillen, Technology Strategist at Insight comments that he expected no different from the outcome of the report. He says: “It’s little surprise that digital transformation is set to take over such a large proportion of IT spending. It’s not only a vital priority for organisations that want to improve their business processes and drive new opportunities. It’s also a difficult, complex process that needs significant investment and widespread business support to succeed.”

The strategist goes on to talk about the growing pressure on IT teams as well as discussing the help that digital transformation can have on this problem. “There is no quick fix to reconciling this burden; investment and technology alone won’t solve the pressure IT teams are under. Instead, digital transformation needs to be an enterprise-wide priority, with responsibility shared across the business. Without this change in corporate culture, the pressure on IT teams will only increase.”

Teams need to know what they are doing

Huw Owen, Head of EMEA & APJ at Couchbase also talks of the importance DX in tech but also suggests it is just as important for developers to know what they are doing when implementing it.

He comments: “We are at a critical moment in the digital transformation journey for many organisations. Having set out ambitious visions, now it’s all about the implementation and delivery. After all, even if you’re pumping money into new projects, it doesn’t mean you’re getting it right.”

“With so much at stake and so many potential setbacks, blindly throwing money at digital transformation isn’t the answer. Instead, organisations need to think about how they’re investing and if projects address their digital needs… Do they have the underlying data architecture in place to make transformation succeed? Have they addressed any inherent weak points, and can the architecture meet their security, performance, scalability and agility demands? Only by making bold technology choices now and ensuring they have the right people and skills in place can businesses ensure this spending on digital transformation brings the results they expect – and need.” Owen advises.

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As part of the growth, the database organisation say they have experienced 100% increase in total contract value, 55% billings growth and a 50% rise in average deal sizes.

Increased drive and innovation

The firm claims the progress is driven by product innovation and a rise in demand for data solutions that are able to handle IoT, mobile and internet applications at scale. It also believes the growth is due to a rise in the adoption of its multicloud to edge NoSQL database along with the company’s use of strategic partnerships.

Overall, this has led to a 70% increase in business, the oraganisation says.

Couchbase has also expanded its print in global tech by opening offices in Manchester and San Francisco to accommodate its increasing work force.

“Continued Focus”

Matt Cain, President and CEO of Couchbase has commented on the good news. He says: “The first half of our fiscal 2020 demonstrates our continued focus and commitment to all of these areas as we accelerate growth of our technical innovation, our customer base, and our talent. Couchbase has been uniquely architected to enable the most business-critical applications for the largest enterprises in the world.  No other database in the market can match our capabilities. The momentum we’ve built so far this year underscores this reality.”

To celebrate the success, Couchbase closed its largest single new logo to date and also added multiple new logos to a range of new and existing customers.

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The recent subsidy for the DevOps enterprise, Gitlab, was forwarded by the private investment firm, ICONIQ Capital, along with the financial services company, Goldman Sachs. Y Combinator Continuity Fund, who are already existing investors, also contributed to the fund.

Investors from Light Street Capital, Adage Capital Management, L.P, Two Sigma Ventures, Alkeon Capital, Altimeter Capital, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners LP, Franklin Templeton, Tiger Global Management, also added money to this round.

Beating the competition

“To be competitive today, companies need to be 10x faster to market. We made an early bet that enterprises would benefit from a single application experience for DevOps teams to accelerate getting software products to market faster and more securely,” said Sid Sijbrandij, CEO at GitLab.

GitLab plans to use the money to further develop its platform by adding key features in areas like planning, security, and monitoring. The organisation aims to take the newly developed platform public next year.

Over 100,000 companies use Gitlab, including Ask Media Group, Charter Communication, Delta Air Lines, Goldman Sachs, Ticketmaster, Nvidia and in the past year, GitLab has more than doubled its employee count.

Increase in business

“GitLab’s ARR growth rate of 143% is a direct reflection of the positive business outcomes realized by our customers as they move to GitLab’s single application solution,” said Michael McBride, Chief Revenue Officer at GitLab.

He added: “We’ve seen the industry follow our lead, as our customers dramatically increase the efficiency of their DevOps workflows and deliver their products to market much faster. This funding will accelerate delivery of the full vision and product scope of GitLab’s complete DevOps platform and deliver even more value to our customers.”

It’s hoped the funding will also benefit the overall productivity of the company by providing more staff in various departments.

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Taken out by Allied Market Research, the study also predicts that the sector will have a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.9% in the next 7 years.

The report defines agile as being “divided into scrum, scrumXP, scrumban, kanban, custom hybrid, and others.”

Last year, scrum led the agile marketplace, the research found, and it’s expected that this dominance will continue. Allied Market Research also thinks that the custom hybrid segment will grow at a rapid rate during this time too.

Reasons for the report

Analysis of growth, trends, and restraints were all key reasons as to why the report was carried out.

It was noted in the investigation that: “Increase in inclination toward digital transformation among conventional organizations is one of the major factors driving the adoption of agile services across the U.S. Moreover, rise in awareness about agile transformation services and surge in need to reallocate resources skillfully & rapidly are the major factors anticipated to drive the U.S. enterprise agile transformation services market growth in this region.”

The pros of agile

As well as talking about higher levels of flexibility and reduced cost, the report also discusses other benefits of agile. It says: “Top impacting factors highlight the opportunities during the forecast period. Factors such as upsurge in need for faster time-to-market in product development, continuous changes in business needs, and increase in need for better communication & collaboration among businesses, along with the rise in shift from traditional transformation toward agile transformation are the key factors that drive the growth of the U.S. enterprise agile transformation services market.”

It’s thought that the majority of the agile market in the US in 2018 came from the west, with small companies fuelling the bulk of growth.  Whilst the South West of the country is expected to have the highest CAGR in the forecast period.

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Microsoft declared the verdict earlier this month, saying: “We’re updating the outsourcing terms for Microsoft on-premises licenses to clarify the distinction between on-premises/traditional outsourcing and cloud services and create more consistent licensing terms across multitenant and dedicated hosted cloud services. Beginning October 1, 2019, on-premises licenses purchased without Software Assurance and mobility rights cannot be deployed with dedicated hosted cloud services offered by the following public cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon (including VMware Cloud on AWS), and Google. They will be referred to as “Listed Providers.” ”

At the same time, the company also announced its Azure Dedicated Host service.

Disapproval from other businesses

Google Cloud President, Robert Enslin, slated Microsoft’s decision on Twitter by commenting, “Shelf-ware. Complex pricing. And now vendor lock-in. Microsoft is taking its greatest hits from the ’90s to the cloud.”

Whilst Amazon Web Services Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels, also stated on the social media site that he did not agree with the choice. He says, “Yet another bait+switch by $MSFT, eliminating license benefits to force MS use. 1st, MS took away BYOL SQL Server on RDS, now no Windows upgrades w/BYOL on#AWS. Hard to trust a co. who raises prices, eliminates benefits, + restricts freedom of choice.”

Being forced to move?

On LinkedIn, AWO’s Vice President, Sandy Carter, also wrote a condemning blog on the subject which she titled, “Why AWS is the best place for your Windows workloads, and how Microsoft is changing their licensing to try to awkwardly force you into Azure.”

In the report, Carter hints the computer company is making a power play. “Microsoft wants you to believe that this is just “removal of outsourcing rights”, but Microsoft is looking to restrict what computer you can use. And what cloud,” she argues.

Microsoft added in its statement that the reason for the rise in prices was due to higher levels of competition along with it offering more services.

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The tech giant also said that thanks to a strong performance under the chief executive, Satya Nadella, they now claim to be one of the world’s most valuable public companies.

Rising above the predictions from Wall Street, the company turned a profit of $33.72 billion this period. This was an increase of 12% from the previous quarter.

Thanks to cloud

It’s thought that one reason for the increase was due to the company’s continuous investment in cloud. Over the past 10 years, these ventures have revolutionised the working progress behind the organisation as, rather than buying applications that run on their own servers, customers are renting computer power and paying for subscriptions from Microsoft.

The organisation also feels that offering customers cloud-based versions of its Office productivity suite contributed to the growth in profit. They also mention the reputation of Azure, the world’s alleged 2^nd largest cloud service that the tech company provide, for the upsurge.

Brad Reback, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. suggested that the organisation is “a clear winner in the digital transformation trend that corporations of all sizes are now undertaking.” Continuing, “They are a vendor of choice.”

Competition for Microsoft

Accounting for around a third of sales for this period, Microsoft’s cloud computing business increased by 39%.

However, the rise of cloud computing services in other companies may provide a challenge to Microsoft. Google’s sister company, Alphabet Inc. and Amazon’s AWS are also in the running for delivering cloud services to customers.

Research company, Gartner Inc., has predicted that spending on cloud will continue to rise and this year alone will grow 18%.

As for Microsoft, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood believes there is nothing for them to worry about as she told analysts that they will continue to rise in profit.

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The file-sharing app, which has 100 million installs on Android, is allegedly displaying secret ads and, unknowingly to users, is subscribing them to paid services. Something which is supposedly adding up to millions of dollars in un-solicited charges.

Researchers for Upstream’s security lab discovered that ads were being used to create fake videos, views, and clicks.

How it works

Speaking to TechCrunch, Guy Krief, chief executive of Upstream said: “It happens in the background…nothing appears on screen.”

The way that money is being taken is through third-party code which appears on the app and makes automatic clicks that lead to illegal purchases.

It is thought that the money is being sent over to the British Virgin Islands as 4shared is owned by New IT Solutions, who are based there.

Elephant Data

Elephant Data, a Hong Kong-based company, are the ones who built the components for the app, which automatically generates clicks that lead to the fraudulent subscriptions. Cookies are then used to presumably hide that the action has taken place.

From April, 4shared no longer appeared on Google Play and instead had been replaced by an app that was almost the exact same, just with the previous Elephant Data-built component removed.

4shared have claimed that they will no longer be working with Elephant Data. However, the components created by Elephant Data cannot be removed by 4shared, and Reddit users have commented that if the app is not updated, then data can still be collected.

Changing names

Upstream said that despite the taking down of the old app from Google Play, 100 million people were still using the old platform.

The researchers warned users of the app by saying: “Instead of appearing under its own name, it assumes the names of either existing legitimate apps (like com.chrome.beta – the new beta version of Google’s Chrome browser) or non-existing ones.”

They continued: “The app seems to be using multiple fake names at the same time which it regularly and simultaneously changes.”

Being aware of problems

Over 114 million mobile transactions were blocked by Upstream that were flagged as suspicious and coming form 4shared. These came from 17 countries and 2 million unique devices. It’s thought that overall, these unwanted transactions would add up to £118 million in airtime charges.

The investigators said that this type of fraud is a growing trend and that those downloading apps need to be vigilant when doing so, making sure to check reviews and developer details.

They said: “Mobile ad fraud is growing in frequency and sophistication. To avoid falling victim to mobile ad fraud, Android users should immediately check their phones to see if they have any suspicious apps installed. If so, they should uninstall them immediately and review any recent mobile airtime charges for possible fraud.”

As well as money, personal data was also being sent off to the British Virgin Islands. This included information such as gender, age, user ID’s, and device ID’s.

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Robert Marchiori, general manager, group transformation at ANZ, ultimately hopes that other divisions within the bank will also take on Agile practices, aiming for finance and risk to be next in the NWOW set up.

“Squads” and “tribes”

Marchiori spoke of how when dividing up the teams, he had created “squads” and “tribes”. Commenting at the Agile Australia conference in Sydney, Marchiori discussed how the organisation of teams using Agile had resulted in less “layers” throughout the company. He said that now, there is more of a direct link between juniors and heads in the business.

In further discussing Agile specifics at the conference, he said that each team does not use Agile in the same way, for example, the T&C team doesn’t use the software in the same way as the technology “squad”.

“The methodology that they use underneath… they’re not going to be necessarily doing Scrum or Lean per se,” he commented. The general manager continued: “They also have operational functions, which are in squads but they’re using obviously more Lean than Agile, because they’re based on queues and things like that.”

It’s not just about the tech

Marchiori really emphasised the importance of the people when implementing new technologies into a company. In his speech, he said: “We took a very conscious decision to really focus on transforming our people first, because it’s the people that change the process and it’s the people that change the technology.”

However, he did also comment on using developing technology at ANZ by saying: “In the technology space, we’re really accelerating our work with cloud, our work with automated pipelines, and our work with enabling the squads to be able to do their work and trying to start that reduction of dependencies that we have built up from a very traditional model.”

A change in working culture

The bank’s executive talent and culture, Kathryn van der Merwe, posted on LinkedIn about the move to use Agile at ANZ. She spoke of how it was a huge shift in the working culture of the bank.

“So far we’ve tossed out the book on ANZ’s dress code, we’ve been supporting ANZ’s shift to new ways of working, we’re supporting our leaders to grow and thrive by introducing new ways to lead programs, and we’re making sure our people have access to the latest and greatest digital learning platforms,” she said in the post.

van der Merwe also said that by using Agile practices, the bank hoped to be able to give their employees a higher quality and quicker value in services.

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They are known for:

• ‘Super Fast authoring’ in which they are able to build stable tests very quickly
• ‘Machine Learning Based Self Maintenance’, meaning that automated tests can be trusted
• ‘Automated Functional Testing’ where Testim uses AI to speed up execution, authoring and maintenance of automated tests.

This ensures that companies sustain a fast release cadence with the highest quality software. The aim of the funding is to address the demand for testing and developing software but without having to compromise quality. The extra money will also benefit the company through allowing them to accelerate autonomous testing.

The money is by numerous companies, but it is SignalFire which stipulated the highest amount of $10 million. Other contributions from Meron Capital, NHN Ventures, Spider Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners took the amount raised to $19.5 Million.

Ilya Kirnos, founding partner and CTO of SignalFire, said: “We invested in Testim early because we recognised its leadership and innovation in the fast-growing test automation space.

“We’ve already seen Testim win customers like Autodesk, NetApp, LogMeIn, Sprinklr and JFrog. With 700% market growth in less than two years, Testim is on track to disrupt the $37 billion testing market with its technology innovation.”

Testim have already achieved their goal of carrying out an impressive 1000 tests in one month. And their collaboration with artificial intelligence means that they are a pioneer in DevOps and automated testing. The company’s founder and CEO, Oren Rubin, spoke of the need to raise money and stay ahead by saying: “To remain competitive, software teams must move faster than ever. We are helping them test more with much less effort, reducing their release risk and increasing their velocity to market.”

The speed in which Software releases are planned is rapidly increasing with Software releases being planned on a monthly basis but are now a weekly occurrence.

This is also similar for updates which now happen almost every day. AI is now being used by application development companies to test automation at each stage of the DevOps lifecycle and to make sure it is more streamline. Testing using artificial intelligence technology is becoming more and more popular as the need for continuous and faster software grows.

“When Testim was founded, our goal was to enable software teams to author tests 20 times faster than before,” Rubin said. “No one believed it was possible but by continuously innovating and leveraging new technologies, we met that goal. Now, we have a more ambitious one – to author 150 times faster through autonomous testing.”

Testim’s new operating officer, Ronit Belson, brings in DevOps experience to her new role. Belson’s previous experience will hopefully mean that Testim will have the opportunity to grow as a company and in operations across North America. The organisation has even been included in the 2019 SD Times 100: ‘Best in Show’ in Software Development for Testing.

Seamless integration is used as part of their work and they are fully compatible on various browsers and platforms. Testim also plan to bring out a mobile network to market which is in its early stages.

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SAP declared that cloud revenue exceeded €1.5 billion (£1.2bn) for the first time in a quarter, with cloud and software orders up by 17% compared to Q1 in 2018.

Cloud revenue grew 45% year-over-year, while total revenue at the company increased by 16%.

“SAP’s results are another illustration that we are a rarity in the enterprise applications software industry,” said Bill McDermott, CEO at SAP, in the firm’s report.

“We have a strong core business, the fastest growing cloud at scale in enterprise software and impressive non-IFRS operating profit growth. We are focused on leading a best-run SAP so we can drive significant margin expansion in the quarters ahead.”

The company said that it is now a market leader in experience management due to its acquisition of Qualtrics in 2018.

“I am extremely pleased that we delivered rapid growth in the cloud and a rock-solid core,” said Luka Mucic, CFO at SAP.

“Non-IFRS operating profit growth saw the biggest improvement in more than three years, with both cloud gross margin and operating margin beating our expectations. This gives us the confidence to further extend our commitment to mid-term margin improvements and stronger shareholder returns as announced today.”

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