Whilst cost will always remain a ‘hygiene factor’ for outsourcing, the report found that clients are now looking to achieve more than just cost savings to enable them to better serve their business.

When those surveyed were asked to explain their rationale for outsourcing over the next two to three years, cost remained the most common response by 26% of respondents; closely followed by quality improvement (21%) and access to skills (19%).

The report also states that, while many are still in the process of centralising their IT operations, the most mature companies in the survey are moving to a Global Business Services (GBS) model (14% in the Americas and 8% in EMEA).

The report helps show how IT has become the key to enabling an enterprise-wide business services organisation, one that encompasses finance, HR, sales and other IT functions.

Key recommendations

In the wake of the study, KPMG made several key recommendations:

•  Explain specific goals in as much detail as possible to offshore developers, and design a well-structured plan with IT vendors
• Share your company’s visions and processes to prevent overspend
• Select the correct pricing model that suits the requirements of the project by defining the upper budget limit before launching a project
• Understanding towards the particular market requirements and target audience
• Agile and scrum help towards managing a project by communicating, reporting bugs and monitoring tasks, as well as managing multifunctional teams in different time zones; especially when running several teams in different regions working on product components.

The study also concluded that a poor approach to governance was another key factor with the potential to undo the benefits of outsourcing and it recommends that to ensure good governance when outsourcing, offshore companies should have clear security policies and certifications in place. This is extremely important now, more than ever, when considering the estimated number of security breaches in IT-related niches will reach 25% by 2020.

Growth opportunities

Privacy concerns are particularly important to companies who hold important data such as intellectual property and patents, bank accounts and Social Security numbers.

According to KPMG’s report, ‘the power of choice’ is an exciting development, but many companies have found themselves facing governance and integration challenges as a result.

In conclusion, it’s important to be aware of all possible risks in order to be able to take full advantage of offshore software developments. Defined project goals and regular communication is key, as well as governance and a clear budget for projects.

Furthermore, outsourcing typically means firms have more growth opportunities, access to skilled talent and the opportunity to focus on core activities. Time zone differences in software development are often challenging, but as long as the correct tools and procedures are in place, the project should be a success.

Written by Leah Alger

The post KPMG study finds root causes of outsourcing issues appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Held on the 21st November at Old Billingsgate, London, the European Software Testing Awards celebrate companies and individuals who have accomplished significant achievements in the software testing and quality assurance market.

The European Software Testing Awards have been launched to recognise the tremendous efforts of individuals and teams when undergoing digital transformation projects – whether they are small and bespoke, or large complex initiatives.

It is open to all individuals and businesses aligned with software testing and quality assurance, irrespective of a business or project size.

However, all entries must have an affiliation to Europe – for example, if you are an Indian-based business, provided your project was on behalf of a European business or was conducted in Europe, then your entry will be accepted.

WHY ENTER?

Winning one of The European Software Testing Awards gives a seal of approval to your activities and is a sign of quality and high standards within your business; can boost your brand awareness and promote your business; recognises the hard work and achievements of your employees, helping to boost staff morale; can impress your business partners, clients, investors and potential investors and boosts your hiring stature within the market, helping to attract the very best talent.

Not forgetting, winners will be mentioned in the TEST Magazine and Software Testing News coverage of the awards, and receive exposure amongst 35,000+ IT professionals in our vast and growing network!

The European Software Testing Awards evening really is a great way to learn, to network and enhance professionalism with others from the software testing community

The booking deadline is 14th September…

SO ENTER NOW!

Not forgetting, we at 31 Media would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to our sponsors Capgemini, Infosys, KPMG, Sandhata and UST Global for their support and continued excellence in the field of software testing.

Written by Leah Alger

The post 4 weeks until The European Software Testing Awards 2018 booking deadline! appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

In order to address these challenges, KPMG in the UK has been going through a steady transformation by moving away from traditional waterfall models to a collaborative, customer-focused DevOps approach which encompasses agile methodologies and cloud technologies such as AWS, Azure and GCP. Due to the nature of the services KPMG provides, there are considerable regulatory and governance considerations to comply with in order to protect our client’s data and ourselves. With this in mind, in 2015 KPMG launched a pilot project with the vision to deliver services efficiently, reliably and securely to our customers.

We started off by creating a small business-centric team to deliver an application in the cloud with the vision to become the benchmark of future projects and evidence to the business that it is possible to do DevOps in the enterprise whilst adopting the necessary security and governance requirements. The application was to be hosted in AWS and utilised infrastructure as code, allowing deployments into multiple environments in a consistent, repeatable manner. It also allowed deployments without having to be concerned around configuration drifts and with the added benefit of rapid deployment speeds.

The infrastructure stack

We also began to slowly develop a pipeline which would allow us to release software code from development through to production consistently and also allow controls and checks in between. The infrastructure stack consisted of Atlassian Stash, now known as Bitbucket, which is our secure, and private source code repository, TeamCity for testing and building the application package and finally to be handed to Octopus Deploy which manages the deployments into a number of environments. The project was an immediate success, as the application team now had the ability to quickly accommodate customer requests, and ensure the stability of the environment without having to rebuild any component manually.

It is a common misconception that large enterprises cannot adopt DevOps and Agile practices, as it is often believed it is suited to smaller start-ups due to the number of processes within a large organisation. We had started our automation journey, however, we now needed to address stringent security requirements, service management considerations and ensuring the ongoing maintenance of the application. Instead of attempting to change an entire department process and method of working, we started having discussions and listening to the various concerns whilst keeping at the forefront cloud best practices such as utilising disposable resources, infrastructure as code, automation, loosely coupled components and asynchronous integration.

Each team had built up their own set of considerations and best practices, therefore when attempting to adopt a new method of working and to deliver value, it was extremely important to try to find a middle ground and compromise. Once there was a clear understanding of the various controls, due to our agile way of working, it was easy for us to change the architecture design whilst minimising both downtime and development impact. We ran two-week sprints and began to work through the deliverables in order to present back to the relevant teams and put in place the necessary documentation.

Utilising services

As the business saw how quickly we were able to deliver value, the word spread around the organisation and the team found themselves going from a single project almost 100 within the space of a year. In order to accommodate for such growth, the team rapidly increased the number of engineers and also began working more closely with service management continuously improving to ensure incidents, changes and problems were handled efficiently and in a timely manner.  We saw improvements in change management as we developed all infrastructure as code, it was easy for us to track, review and manage changes. At a high level, everything was committed into source control, reviewed by senior engineers and evaluated by the product owner to validate there were no business risks.

Today we have matured our offering in a variety of ways from our pipeline by utilising services like Jenkins to handle orchestration, Terraform for infrastructure, Vault for security, Trend Micro for anti-malware and anti-virus along with our cloud transformation professional services helping some of the biggest companies in the world adopt DevOps and move towards working in a more agile manner to ultimately improve customer experience.

Adopting DevOps and cloud initiatives involves changes from all parts of the organisation and at all levels including culture, process and technology. Organisational change is a journey which takes time, understanding and collaboration to succeed.

Written by DevOps Manager at KPMG, Adnan Rashid

The post Moving away from traditional waterfall methods appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The combination of technologies brings process management and fast low-code development to Azure’s Infrastructure as-a-service (IaaS).

Using Azure’s native cloud architecture, Appian customers have control over the platform through making a comprehensive deployment design guide for deploying Appian on Azure.

Further extending options for clients’ worldwide, strategic partners, such as KPMG, can provide the Appian digital transformation platform to customers deploying on Azure.

‘Making Appian and Azure a natural choice’

Malcolm Ross, vice president at Appian, said: “We are focused on providing our customers with the flexibility to deploy the Appian platform in environments that work best for their needs.

“As a leader in low-code and business process management, our clients select us because building custom applications is intuitive and easy in our platform. We’ve seen demand from our customers to leverage the platform within Microsoft Azure, their preferred IaaS solution, making Appian on Azure a natural choice.”

Andrea Carl, director at Microsoft Corp, added: “We are pleased to see Appian benefit from the global scale and breadth of cloud services of Microsoft Azure.”

This expansion also benefits Appian’s global partner ecosystem.

Written from press release by Leah Alger

The post Appian deploys digital transformation platform appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The survey found that 57% of men are confident they have tech skills needed by today’s employers, compared to 37% of young women.

Aidan Brennan, KPMG’s head of digital transformation, said: “The issue here isn’t around competency, but rather how businesses understand the underlying capability of an individual and how to unlock it. I think this research highlights the work that needs to be done to show the next generation that when it comes to a career in tech, gender isn’t part of the equation.

“Competition for jobs is tough, and we know that female job seekers can be less likely to apply for a role than their male counterparts if they don’t feel they already possess every pre-requisite the job demands. Businesses committed to building a truly diverse workforce need to adapt their recruitment processes to reflect this, and ensure they don’t fall into the trap of listening only to those who shout about their capability the loudest.”

‘Maintaining a level of equality’

According to the poll, 73% of female respondents said they have not considered a graduate job in technology.

Anna Purchas, head of people at KPMG, added: “We recruit around 1,000 graduates each year through our graduate recruitment process, Launch Pad, and we are proud to have reached a 50% gender split amongst our graduate intake.

“However, to maintain this level of equality in an increasingly digital world, it’s vital that more women have the confidence that their tech skills will be applicable for a role at a professional services firm like ours.

“Earlier this year saw the successful launch of ITs Her Future, our initiative aimed at encouraging more women to consider a career in tech. This summer we also launched Future Ready, our online tool designed to help young people who may not yet have experienced working in an office understand how the skills they do possess could be applicable in the workplace.”

Written from press release by Leah Alger

The post Young women have ‘no confidence in digital skills’, says survey appeared first on DevOps Online North America.