Difficulties in adopting a standard operating model

As explained earlier in this chapter, organizations have a diverse application and infrastructure landscape with unique characteristics based on their architecture and the business requirements they serve. Therefore, it is difficult to adopt a standardized operating model across the layers since emerging technologies such as edge computing and AI will further increase this complexity. Focusing on just the infrastructure layer alone, the Systems of Innovation layer delivers the most value with faster and safer experimentation capabilities to test new ideas, end-to-end automation, self-service, and horizontal scalability. But for enterprises that deliver most of their business services with traditional Systems of Record applications, moving to a modern infrastructure may not be feasible. Two opposing viewpoints are in play:

• Resist change to reduce risk and improve stability
• Embrace change to improve innovation velocity and...