Today’s workforce is rapidly experiencing a cultural revolution. As businesses continue to adopt IT for their core operations and processes, it is more important than ever for IT applications to be reliable and to deliver great performance. Poor application performance results in a loss in business productivity, which in turn has a direct impact on revenues, affects customer satisfaction and tarnishes brand reputation.

I have a coffee mug on my desk that I got from a sales manager many years ago. It’s now filled with pens (I don’t drink coffee), but I take a look at it once in a while. I was starting to think about IT transformation again and noticed a picture of my daughter and an expired AAA card (I might have been thinking AARP) as I looked at that old mug… it reminded me I’m not getting any younger. But it also reminded me of a paradox of culture change.

Constant changes happen in today’s digital world. New versions of applications, databases, middleware, and virtualization technologies are being released regularly – at least once every 6-12 months. Patches and upgrades to operating systems and changes to anti-virus software are being released in weekly cycles rather than months. As DevOps gets adopted on a broader scale, changes to applications will be even more frequent.