Prepare to be disrupted - and to fight back

Stephen Ponsford says ICT teams have to should out loud and lead the way for the organisation in responding to major business technology shifts.

You have to be the “canaries in your coal mine,” says Ponsford, Senior Cloud Advisor, Chief Technology Office, at Revera.

He says the focus for New Zealand organisations is how to get into a position of fighting back from the technology side.

Ponsford shares lessons learned from his work at IT Heavy Hitters, a charity boxing event.

One of the things that can potentially happen to participants is having one’s teeth knocked out, or getting a black eye, he explains. "So you start thinking about your fight strategy, how do you fight back and what are the implications."

Businesses are now widely using application programming interfaces (APIs), but despite widespread use, a recent study has found most companies are struggling with challenges ranging from getting infrastructure in place to finding suppliers to simply setting strategy and objectives.

"APIs can add tremendous value to a business, but simply having them is not enough," says Rahim Bhatia, general manager, Developer Products, CA Technologies. "Like products, they have to be properly created, managed, monitored and secured or bad things can happen, as we saw in recent connected car incidents or the Snapchat breach two years ago."