The Paradigm Shift for Solution Professionals

Solution professionals, arguably the most crucial members for any IT organization and people from my own ilk, are probably facing one of the most disruptive, challenging and interesting times in their careers. To begin this discussion, let me first clarify that I am talking about the client-facing Solution Professionals who create Enterprise Architecture and Technology Solutions for clients, primarily helping them to meet their ever-changing business needs. I will exclude the Solution Professionals who are part of the product designs, R&D teams and basically the pre-sales team members from the hardware or software manufacturing community.  

We are all well-aware about the massive disruptions happening in the ways we are conducting business today primarily led by Digital Transformation and emergence of SMAC (Social, Media, Analytics and Cloud), I am not going to repeat those. Rather, I’d like to highlight how I feel it is changing the way solutions are being approached (or should be approached) by the Solution Professionals at this disruptive environment.

Looking back, the approach of Solution Professionals or Architects was not so complex 5 years back (or even 4,3,2 years back). After understanding the requirement of client, the primary job of a Solution Architect was to build the overall architectural blue print with a set of very precisely defined product sets (hardware and software) and then wrap it with services such as installation/implementation and support. Obviously it is much more complex than it actually sounds and a lot of hard work usually by a set of very talented individuals, but at its core, the fundamentals were similar; and it was that way for a long time.

Emergence of XaaS (“Everything as a Service”) Providers has blurred and is continuously blurring the hard-lines between products, solutions and services. From a very basic and fundamental requirement like a Virtual Machine or a Mailbox to a very complex platform like a Big Data/Analytics or Artificial Intelligence – everything is now available “as a service” with a hugely diverse choice of solutions and services.

This phenomena is causing some very interesting changes in the “traditional” solution architecture approaches. Earlier, the Solution Architects were to "Solution" Products and were then wrapping them with Services, now they have to solution Services and wrap them with more Services. The underlying products which the Solution Architects used to take great care and pride (and time) to solution are vanishing fast from his/her responsibility and now he/she have to deal with a bunch of services which inherently has many layers of choices, and then he/she will have to add wrappers of services to meet the client requirements. This is a big paradigm shift.

Those who are yet to come to terms with this Paradigm Shift are uncomfortable with the fact that someone (the XaaS providers) has thought through so much and taken away such a large extent of solution piece of work and that discomfort is often driving thought processes which are around the following –

-          This cannot be so simple

-          This will not work

-          Client will have a tough time to migrate

-          What about Service Levels

And finally,

-          Why not put a brick and mortar solution

This thought process may often lead to over-solution and a risk-averse approach resulting into a solution with inflated cost or it may also lead to a solution where the right areas over and above the offering from the XaaS are not covered leading to a gap in the solution. Either way the solution is not going to be a right fit for the client and the provider.

So what do we do as next generation Solution Professionals? Well to begin with, keep it simple. First of all we have to accept that yes there is a change and life is not same anymore. And then start with the basics. Think why the client is talking to you instead of going to the XaaS directly? Why the XaaS is not able to meet all the client’s requirements – is it Technology? SLA? Terms? Commitment? Comfort? Commercial Construct? These answers will drive the Solution Architect’s approach going forward. I believe the next generation of Solution Architects will have to be a little bit more business minded (in addition to being sound in the ever-changing technology trends) to get to the root of the clients’ requirements BEYOND the technology requirements to right-fit the solution utilizing the full gamut of the XaaS offerings.

We are sure that this is happening already and will then the next round of disruption happen by probably blurring the border of Solution Professionals and Sales or Business Development? It will be interesting to watch this space.