Digital transformation is about strategically harnessing technology to increase results across all aspects of the business. It could mean moving from on-premises servers to the cloud to save money and increase scalability or adding data analytics and business intelligence tools to gain information. Each business is different; however, the state at which digitalization is completed will differ from that of other companies.
Let’s explore digital transformation and the five layers of technology in business that play a crucial function.
The five Business Technology Layers You Will Meet when you are undergoing Digital Transformation
Before we dive into the technology layer of business in digital transformation, let’s discuss this as an important aspect. Different companies have different levels of maturity in digital transformation. We recommend starting at the top layer and then assessing the current state of your company’s maturity at each step.
Layer 1: The Hardware, Infrastructure, Bare Metal
Hardware for servers is IT infrastructure or “bare metallic.” No matter how you refer to it, IT infrastructure constitutes the core component of any digital transformation strategy. It provides a technological basis that defines what capabilities are available and the limitations which affect the things that businesses can or can do in the long run.
Some of the performance factors to take into consideration are CPU, RAM, and storage resources, latency and bandwidth databases, as well as datacenter geography. Multi-cloud or hybrid cloud assets. There is also the option of public cloud services for cheaper shared computing and virtual private clouds to create isolated instances that offer greater security and stability.
According to the 2024 State of IT report, hardware was responsible for 31 per cent of IT budgets, which is a large portion. Inefficient or unreliable IT infrastructures also affect the efficiency and performance of digital services, resulting in poor customer and employee experience. This is why IT departments must improve their existing infrastructure, review the current IT capabilities for future requirements, and proactively adopt new server technology to help future business initiatives.
Layer 2: IT Management Components
Once you have your hardware, it is time to find a way to connect to and control it.
In the multi-cloud environment, this may comprise the orchestration layer. To run Kubernetes containers, this could include the microservice layer. The most common components are configuration management assets discovery, configuration management, asset management firewalls for networks and encryption, process and system logs, and auditing of data security and security.
This layer can be a great opportunity to promote standardization throughout the IT infrastructure. Selecting interoperable technologies means that you’ll be able to do more with fewer components, thus reducing the number of dependencies you have to manage. In other words, IT management components are designed to facilitate agile operations while ensuring the security and compliance of the underlying systems.
Layer 3: Platform as a Layer
With the hardware installed, and an interface that controls the hardware, we now are left with platforms. Platforms are essentially an array of software or hardware components that work together to produce the desired outcome. A company that offers data warehouses could provide ANSI SQL cloud interfaces and ETL pipelines, SQL processes, and cloud storage for data. These are combined to create an enterprise-level Data Warehouse Platform.
Other platforms are security-related, Internet of Things, analytics and artificial intelligence, business intelligence, machine learning, and APIs for application programming.
Within this level, a digital transformation objective could be service-oriented architecture or the use of components from software using service interfaces. This will make it easier to connect platforms by applying the open standard. Another objective could be eliminating data silos by utilizing the data lake, warehouse, or federated database platform. This increases the availability of data and accessibility and enables big data analytics and capabilities for data mining.
Layer 4: Domain Layer
As a royal institution uses the kingdom as its domain of operation, IT departments comprise an array of companies, services and business logic that constitute the domain layer. DDD or domain-driven design (DDD) is a method to design the domain layer under the overall business model of the enterprise.
Domain layering is the method of recording real-world business regulations in a digital format that computers understand. It describes how and who can make data, store, read and modify data. It also explains how business objects work together and defines the expected processes for certain events and actions.
The primary goal is to define a fundamental domain model. It does not have any connections or dependencies between other programs. System architects and designers can use this to comprehend relationships between entities within the domain, ignore specific application modules, and promote an agnosticism of the domain layer.
Layer 5: User-Facing Channel Layer
Layers one through four are hidden from the user generally. What they do observe can be seen as that channel layer. Consider this an IT communication channel used by user-facing apps and other services. A few isolated instances of an app can communicate with each other by using this layer. For example, two users work in real-time on one cloud-based document.
It is dependent upon the domain layer and platform layer. Channel layers are also synchronous for both sending and receiving traffic. This could be the live chat feature, an e-commerce store or software for managing vendor relationships.
The primary goal of this layer should be on meeting the needs of both the stakeholders and customers. This is achievable by focusing on agnostic, open standards and minimizing the use of custom code.
