COVID-19 demands turn 'change resistant' businesses to 'change hungry'

As organizations rapidly and successfully implement COVID-required tech fixes such as mass implementation of VPNs and remote working, they’ve gotten enthusiastic on new digital transformation, says a senior IBM boss.

“Projects that, in the past, were taking many, many years to work through, then got done literally in weeks,” said Howard Boville (pictured), senior vice president of hybrid cloud at IBM. “Companies therefore saw confidence in that,” and broader digital transformations are being launched as a result, he added.

A former chief technology officer of Bank of America, Boville spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during IBM Think. They discussed digital transformation trends, hybrid cloud, AI and how to get there. (* Disclosure below.)

How to perform digital transformation

Boville gave Furrier his top tips: Key to a successful digital transformation is to do it from a business process perspective and not to simply focus on the underlying technology.

However, trip-ups exist, Boville warned. “Legacy’s a problem,” the tech veteran said. “They’ve got legacy environments to work through,” so its “not as straightforward as they thought it might be.” That’s where hybrid cloud, as opposed to full-on cloud, comes in, he believes.

A second point that the transformation expert says he’s learned is that the people within the organization need to become a part of the transformation.

“A lot of the actual manual work you did, previously, we’ll be doing it in an automated fashion, so an AI fashion,” he said. So the workers need to have their skills transformed too. You then end up with “people that are actually change hungry as opposed to change resistant.”

Adjacent skillsets should become part of training to get there. “They shouldn’t feel fearful that it’s a place where they actually won’t have a role,” Boville said. “They just won’t have a role with the current skillset they’ve got. Most of my comments are based upon the experiences and mistakes that I’ve made in my career.”

So what’s the prime best practice? “You’ve got to deal with the difficult problems first,” Boville replied.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE