CM12: Beat disruption with enterprise data architecture w/ Russell Villemez
Welcome to Custom Made — our new weekly podcast that explores the many traits of successful product development.
We are on episode #012 of Custom Made and this week I am joined again by Russell Villemez — Dialexa’s Sr Partner and Head of Technology Strategy.
Throughout his career, Russell has either been a CIO or worked with CIOs at enterprise organizations, providing technology transformation leadership to companies experiencing periods of major change.
In his role here at Dialexa, Russell works with CIOs to assess their current technology ecosystems and develop multi-year roadmaps to direct and drive their digital transformation efforts.
Russell has previously joined me on our second episode of Custom Made to discuss the topic of “digital transformation” and how it is being thought of in the wrong way — once you have finished listening to this episode, be sure to check out episode #2 to hear his thoughts.
On this weeks episode, Russell and I are discussing the need for CIOs to build an enterprise data platform that all applications can pull from and feed into, instead of self-contained applications with their own independent databases which cause data fragmentation and duplication.
Building an enterprise data platform is essential for any organization if they are to have the ability to better understand their customer, activate successfully with an omnichannel strategy, and be able to build new applications that add data value, not data debt.
And so why should every CIO and technology leader at an enterprise organization listen to this topic and take action on Russell’s advice?
The disruption coming from your competition, and coming from left field, is coming faster and more dramatically than ever before.
Lets say your business has a mandate from the CEO that they need to do XYZ (for example a blockchain application) and you need to do it right away as a defensive maneuver against that disruption; but the IT response to this request is two years using the old methods of product development, and for this new product to be successful it requires an enterprise data platform, which takes two years to build before you can even start this new product that could help avoid disruption — well, you have already been disrupted, you just may not know it!
CIOs need to act now, while this pressure is not upon them to build an enterprise data platform so that they can have better response times to building new applications, have a unified view of their data, and deploy successful products to avoid disruption.
In addition to this weeks episode of Custom Made, here are quick links to additional articles Russell has created to aid in your data and digital transformation efforts:
- Still Struggling Between Monoliths and Microservices? Think About Your Data Models
- Using a Beachhead to Jump-Start Your Digital Transformation
- Technology Can’t Solve Disruption Challenges Alone — Enterprises Need Better Strategies
- Organizational Challenges CIOs Face as Companies Change Rapidly — And What to Do About Them
You can catch Russell’s full Custom Made episode here:
And, if you prefer to listen on the go, you can get all episodes of Custom Made on these platforms and many more. Do subscribe on your favorite platform to catch each episode as it is released, and let me know any feedback, questions, and recommendations on twitter @dougplatts.
