IBM Rational’s user conference, “Innovate 2010,” kicks off today with a bold and inspiring message about the importance of software development: “Software is the invisible thread of innovation.” It’s no doubt correct; software has become absolutely vital—in many cases, core—to the execution of business. For a new generation of web-oriented companies, software is nothing short of the business itself.
If you ask me, this is a message development organizations should embrace with the pride of a job well done—and IT operations should embrace as a catalyst for change.
Why? Because, today, there’s an impedance mismatch between dev and ops. Dev churns out new software and changes far more quickly than IT can respond. Dev produces this invisible thread of innovation, which IT struggles to consume.
IT often lacks the tools, process and culture to match the complexity, scale and change of software in production. This is the argument behind the DevOps movement, which has done a great job of shining light on the dark space between dev and ops.
It’s also an argument for the software distribution hub, which is about drawing the invisible thread of innovation from the source of software—custom, commercial and open source; to deployed business services—across physical, virtual and cloud. When changes are made to the software sources, it’s seamlessly flowed through the hub and to deployed systems and business services.
In this manner, this approach is about managing the entire software supply chain as an integrated thread—from the origin of the software to the business service in production.
The message? Software is undoubtedly the invisible thread of innovation, but innovation isn’t realized in dev—it’s realized in ops. This is why this thread must become less of a conceptual whiteboard ideal and more of an IT supply chain reality.
