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The Save A Lot IT team faced a tough challenge after splitting away from its parent company. Here are the 10 IT principles that fueled their digital transformation, from SD-WAN to accelerating cloud innovation.

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By standardizing on a container platform, Domino’s developers will be able to efficiently co-develop modern apps to improve the customer experience both online and in stores.

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From augmented reality to bot-powered websites, shoppers want awe-inspiring experiences. And loyalty is more than the logo. Now, it’s all about the #shopculturetech experience.

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Do you remember the first thing you bought online? For many of us, it was a textbook or a resold collector’s item from an online auction site. Fast forward to today—a mere 25 year journey—and there are two whole generations who couldn’t comprehend that before they were born, you couldn’t open an app and have something delivered in two days or less. Or even more recently, pull up to the curb and get it within 2 hours of your order.

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Online shopping is a way of modern life. And it’s now so common that the e-commerce market value exceeded $10 trillion in 2020, according to <a href="https://99firms.com/blog/ecommerce-statistics/#gref" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Grand View Research</a>. And over half of consumers use smartphones for shopping, according to a recent <a href="https://99firms.com/blog/ecommerce-statistics/#gref" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Statista</a> report.

These exceptional numbers are due in large part to the crazy world we lived in in 2020. But before we jump into the present day “shop culture tech” experience, let’s take a step back and dive into just how quickly we went from buying <em>only books</em> online to what<a href="https://www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/retail-it-services.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> retailers</a> now call omni-channel shopping experiences.

Looking back, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo! were digital retail pioneers, and “at the time, had a lot going for them,” explained Joseph Skorupa, <a href="https://risnews.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RIS News</a> Editor at Large. “They were making money in different ways.”

Other retailers saw competitors’ success and recognized it was a trend they couldn’t ignore. Customers demanded efficiency, but no one had the infrastructure in place—the warehouses and logistics—that Amazon did, “so retailers had to catch up and it took them quite a while…but shoppers demanded it… They really drove the process,” Skorupa said.

Because there’s a lot of efficiency in shopping from home, retailers began to imagine scenarios that could optimally blend physical and online retail for the benefit of both customers and brands. Today, that connected, seamless experience is known as the omni-channel experience. And digital technology is key to its success.

Amid 2020’s shelter-in-place mandates, retailers had to pivot quickly to support social distancing and at-home shopping. They also had to scramble as customers surged into stores, cleared items off shelves (like toilet paper!) and put pressure on supply chains.

<a href="https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DICK’S Sporting Goods</a>, for example, saw a significant spike in demand for sports such as golf and tennis, as well as fitness. “We had to really figure out ways to provide that product to our customers and in a safe way,” explained Jason Williams, VP of Athlete Technology at DICK’S Sporting Goods.

“We often reference our contactless curbside pickup process as one of the big wins that we had during that time. We will deliver that service within 48 hours,” Williams said.

DICK’S Sporting Goods—which, at its roots, is customer-athlete obsessed—was among those most ready for the acceleration of online buying. Its digital foundation already enabled e-commerce and omni-channel experiences. Yet, the pandemic challenged the retailer’s offerings to become even more flexible and creative.

“What we built was based on a lot of services that we already had readily available with our pick-and-pack and real-time inventory processes in the stores for teammates,” Williams said. “We could tie them together and put a product out there quickly across multiple portfolios.”

He said the company’s contactless curbside pickup service was stood up quickly, but truly years in the making. And it really resonated with customers. So has its Scorecard loyalty program.

The retailer continues to invest in data science to understand its customer, “knowing what our customers buying trends are and what they're searching for online,” said Williams. “Our data strategy is really driven around real-time personalization.”

Another innovation the pandemic accelerated is robots. Leading U.S. retailers “recently began expanding robotic fleets by adding autonomous floor scrubbers to make their stores safer,” said Skorupa.

He believes autonomous processes, being handled by robots, is the next major trend. “And I see that really exploding in the next year or two. It will be mainstream, and every retailer will have robots in one form or another,” Skorupa concluded.

Blakely Thomas-Aguilar

From augmented reality to bots, shoppers want awe-inspiring experiences. Now, it’s all about the #shopculturetech retail experience.

From augmented reality to bots, shoppers want awe-inspiring experiences. And now, it’s all about the #shopculturetech experience.

Pop Culture Tech Podcast: Shop Culture Tech

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Pop Culture Tech Podcast 2.3: Shop Culture Tech

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<p>Since opening its first store in 1948, <a href="https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/">DICK’S Sporting Goods</a> has put customers <em>(aka </em><em>athletes) </em>first. When the 2020 pandemic hit, the company quickly pivoted strategies to:</p>
<ol>
<li>Safely serve athletes and help them enjoy socially distanced sports and activities.</li>
<li>Support a safe working environment for employees (aka teammates).</li>
<li>Deliver on business and revenue objectives.</li>
</ol>
<p>By relying on its legacy of delivering innovative digital experiences, DICK’S Sporting Goods not only weathered the pandemic—they came out stronger than ever.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_24540" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24540" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-24540" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jason-Williams-DSG.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="400" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jason-Williams-DSG.jpg 400w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jason-Williams-DSG.jpg?resize=150,150 150w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jason-Williams-DSG.jpg?resize=300,300 300w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /><p id="caption-attachment-24540" class="wp-caption-text">Jason Williams, vice president of Athlete Technology, DICK&#8217;S Sporting Goods</p></div></p>
<p>We were fortunate to catch up with Jason Williams, vice president of Athlete Technology at DICK&#8217;s Sporting Goods, to talk about the retailer’s digital transformation, omni-channel experience and what’s up next.</p>
<h2>What is the significance of referring to your customers as athletes?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> We consider all our customers athletes. And that’s the way we view and treat them. In some way, all of them have an aspiration to participate in sports—whether they’re playing themselves, their kids are playing or they&#8217;re doing leisure-specific or stay-in-shape work.</p>
<p>We’re obsessed with our athletes. That’s part of the roots of DICK’S Sporting Goods. So not only does my title include athlete, but a lot of our technology teams have athlete as part of the naming convention.</p>
<h2>For those that don’t know DICK’S Sporting Goods, how does your digital experience work?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> We’ve invested heavily in technology for years. We developed our in-house e-commerce platform as a flexible service, and we build all digital products and services on it. A case in point is our responsive website, which includes our e-commerce platform for all of our e-commerce sites—DICK’S Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, Field &#038; Stream. Anytime we build a new service, it&#8217;s on this platform.</p>
<p>Optimal service really resonates with our athletes. What we built is very flexible and nimble, delivering so many different benefits. This is incredibly important for our athlete experience, but also for our teammates. We’ve built capabilities such as an internal app that our teammates use for real-time metrics and communication on the sales floor. This makes their jobs easier so they can spend more time with the athlete.</p>
<h2>How did the pandemic impact your company?</h2>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Come Back Stronger" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xa_Li9RsOH8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> At the beginning, we didn’t know we would thrive.  But we did. And a lot of that was due to the amount of work that we had in the past as part of building our technology foundation and platform for services, which allowed us to spin up our curbside offering in less than 48 hours.</p>
<p>We also saw a significant spike in demand for sports like golf and outdoor activities, as well as home fitness. We realized our athletes wanted to remain active and healthy. They wanted to move. Those are some of the activities they could do safely. So, we had to figure out ways to provide those products to our athletes and in a safe way. We stayed focused on that, working with our suppliers and vendors to get product into our stores.</p>


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<h2>Which digital offering stood out during the pandemic?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> We often reference our curbside contactless pickup process as one of our big wins. It really resonates with our athletes, and we think it’s here to stay. We may have spun it up quickly, but it was years in the making. It allowed us to provide our products in a way that was safe for our teammates and for our athletes.</p>
<p>We built it based on a lot of services that we had readily available with our pick-and-pack and real-time inventory processes in the stores for our teammates. We were able to tie things together and put a product out there quickly across multiple portfolios—touching marketing, e-commerce and stores. We built a service and quickly lit it up, and then we were able to iterate and add additional features to it.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Contactless Curbside Pickup Available at DICK&#039;S Sporting Goods" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p744UokdH98?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2>How has customer engagement transitioned to more of an omni-channel or multi-touch digital experience?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> We see our stores as the hub of our omni-channel experience. People still want to come in. They want to feel, they want to see, and they want to try on. And we want to give them that ability, then enable them to either order online or order in the store and combine that experience.</p>
<p>This is also why we are re-imagining the athlete experience through new store concepts like <a href="https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/s/houseofsport">House of Sport</a>, which takes experiential retail to another level by exploring the future of retail through multi-sport experiences inside and outside the store, community involvement, elevated customer service and enhanced technology. We currently have House of Sport locations in Knoxville, Tenn. and Victor, N.Y.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="House of Sport Victor Now Open :60" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aMEDgw6P1uU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Our e-commerce experience is an extension of our stores. We see it as one holistic experience. Whether fulfilling from one of our stores—where you buy online or pick up in store—or shipping from our stores, we can get the products into our athletes’ hands as soon as possible.</p>
<h2>How do you use tech innovation to build brand loyalty with your audiences?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> We&#8217;ve done a lot of work in the data sciences space and leveraging data in our athlete hub. We really want to know our athletes—their buying trends and behaviors. And we want to build all our services to really delight them. We&#8217;ve been spending a lot of time on personalization—driving through offers, ensuring they have an optimal experience, and that they’re going to want to come back and shop more with us.</p>
<p>An example of this data-centric innovation is our ScoreCard loyalty program. It’s a key part of our marketing engine. The program has more than 20 million active users and accounts for more than 70% of our sales.</p>
<h2>What is your philosophy around emerging technologies such as modern apps, containers and Kubernetes?</h2>
<p><strong>Williams:</strong> Innovation is very important to us as an organization. We&#8217;re continually looking at ways we can <a href="https://tanzu.vmware.com/customers/dicks-sporting-goods">make our applications more efficient</a> and offer more capabilities to drive new business capabilities. I think the game is going to change in the next five years and staying ahead of it is going to be key.</p>
<p>Obviously, data is an area that we&#8217;re going to continue to invest in—taking a mobile-first approach—whether it&#8217;s the online shopping experience in mobile apps or apps that ensure our teammates are more efficient. Within our stores, connectivity will be a very big topic over the coming years.</p>
<p>In addition, we are hiring more “futurists” that will continue to help us think through what’s next.</p>
<p><em>This interview was edited for length and clarity.</em></p>


<p>How DICK’S moved its software development in-house and aced omnichannel retail.</p>

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How DICK’S Sporting Goods’ digital investments power best-in-class omni-channel customer experiences—even in a pandemic.

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<p>Only 46% of senior business leaders felt their business continuity plans were effective during shutdowns caused by the pandemic, according to a recent <a href="https://www.vmware.com/co/cio-vantage/articles/mit-technology-review-insights-report.html">MIT Technology Review Insights survey</a>. Is that surprising? Not really, because IT wasn’t around during the last global pandemic.</p>
<p>Now, companies are sharing valuable lessons learned about IT resilience, risk and security. And these insights may prove essential for confronting future challenges and supporting ongoing digital transformation.</p>
<p>“With the pandemic, it wasn&#8217;t enough to plan for critical staff working from an alternate location or from home for a period of time,” said Angela Weinman, head of global governance, risk and compliance at VMware. “Those who could pivot fastest last year were the ones who had the broadest plans or who could mitigate [risk] by being furthest along their digital transformation journey.”</p>
<p>Weinman made her observation during the opening keynote session of <a href="https://www.rsaconference.com/">RSA Conference 2021</a>, “<em>Telling Hard Truths to Impact Change in Cybersecurity</em>.” She was joined by Jimmy Sanders, head of information security at Netflix DVD and a director for the <a href="https://www.issa.org/">Information Systems Security Association</a> (ISSA).</p>
<p>Weinman and Sanders encouraged IT security professionals to “zoom out, throw out and reach out” to build greater resilience.</p>


<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="RSAC 2021 Keynote: Telling Hard Truths to Impact Change in Cybersecurity" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-PYtiwXpWD0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2>Hard Truth 1: The Security Risk Picture Is Out of Focus</h2>
<p>Ultimately, if companies can’t accurately determine risk, it’s difficult for them to recover quickly. This is true of direct security threats, like the recent rash of ransomware attacks. Additionally, unforeseen events, like a pandemic, open organizations to new and different threats.</p>
<p>Risk must drive everything in cybersecurity because security is just one big risk management program. But if COVID-19 taught organizations anything, it’s that the current risk picture is out of focus. An inaccurate—or blurry—risk picture can lead organizations on a wild goose chase. Security pros end up initiating the wrong projects or investing resources in the wrong priorities.</p>
<p>“Our desire as security professionals to be accurate can cause us to be too conservative when predicting impacts and necessary treatment,” Weinman said.</p>
<p>Rather than focusing directly on a risk scenario and its impact, organizations should zoom out and think in terms of a spectrum of possible impacts. Sanders described how many security professionals, when assessing risk and planning for business continuity, determine who in the organization is “critical” when building their plan.</p>
<p>When COVID-19 hit, for many organizations, that meant everyone. Virtually no one anticipated the impact correctly: that the business need would be for almost everyone to work remotely for a year or more, not just a handful of people working remotely for a couple months.</p>
<p>Zooming out to get a more accurate risk picture requires engaging different parts of the enterprise. It can’t fall solely on the IT security team. The CISO’s office needs to be involved, naturally, but so do other executives, risk committees and board audit committees.</p>
<p>“Let the business drive agreement of where on the spectrum predicted impacts should go,” Weinman said, “just as similar dialogs drive risk posture positions today.”</p>
<p>And in expanding views, organizations can better prioritize security efforts. This means that perhaps not all environments will be protected equally.</p>
<p>“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you&#8217;re not going to do,” said Sanders. “In chess-speak, we must see the entire board. We must ensure we build resilience into our environments so the taking of a symbolic pawn doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s game over.”</p>


<p>The sharp rise in ransomware attacks during 2020 calls for a look at cybersecurity practices—both at the enterprise level and at home. Here are five steps to help reduce risk.</p>

<h2>Hard Truth 2: Legacy Security Practices Are Slowing Things Down</h2>
<p>The same way organizations need to zoom out to assess risk, including more points of view will drive better risk management practices.</p>
<p>“Create an environment where the best ideas win, and this improves our security posture overall,” Sanders said. “These diverse thoughts stem from allowing competing ideas and viewpoints to be voiced without the fear of ridicule and condemnation.”</p>
<p>At Netflix DVD, Sanders encourages his team to begin a regular process of presenting a proof-of-concept tool or technique every month. The result was an information security team with a resilient and nimble mindset, said Sanders—one that wasn’t easily rattled by change because it was always thinking outside the box.</p>
<p>For many security organizations, a need to appear “mature” leads them to automate many processes and build layer upon layer. “Like a geological formation,” Weinman said. “Hard and inflexible, weighing us down along with the business units we work with. How many things exist so that we can check a box for some long-forgotten reason?”</p>
<p>In the current landscape, as companies go wide angle to consider a spectrum of security threats, everything should be on the table. All security practices should be open to challenge and, if appropriate, be thrown aside. As long as an organization can map a security practice back to a business goal or a cyber-hygiene fundamental, it can validate its decisions. If it can’t, it needs to be open to new ideas, which often come from its newest employees.</p>
<p>“It’s not just a good idea to throw things out, it’s a survival tactic,” said Weinman.</p>
<p>To scale and remain agile, organizations must constantly challenge the “how” of cybersecurity, as well as the “why.”</p>
<h2>Hard Truth 3: Security Is Not a Solo Sport</h2>
<p>No single group or organization can stem the tide of security threats. Put simply, we’re all in this together. The security community must make best practices available to everyone. It’s one thing to lead the security team inside an organization and champion the tools that will protect the network and allow it to pass a security audit. It’s another thing to learn from others.</p>


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<p>Sanders said his career began by enthusiastically doing the former, but really took off when he engaged outside organizations in doing the latter.</p>
<p>“Shared accountability, increased diversity and embracing innovative techniques together will allow us to make amazing progress,” Sanders said.</p>
<p>Weinman called it “community resilience,” in which the security community works together to solve problems.</p>
<p>“Throw out those old ways of doing things and reach out,” she concluded. “We&#8217;re more resilient and better at security when we leverage our relationships and collective knowledge.”</p>


VMware Staff

Companies are now sharing valuable lessons learned from the pandemic about IT resilience, risk and security—which may prove essential.

Experts from Netflix DVD and VMware share hard truths and valuable cybersecurity lessons learned from the pandemic.

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Lessons Learned About Cybersecurity During the Pandemic

<p>When Japan hosted its first Olympic Games in 1964, it marked the country’s emergence from the post-war era and a return to the global stage as a major economic force. Since then, Japan became the leader in technology and innovation in Asia<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>. And the Japanese government hopes to replicate that success in the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.</p>
<p>Yet, ZOZO Technologies, Inc., the platform developer for Japan’s largest online fashion online shopping website ZOZOTOWN, foresaw significant technical challenges. The Games are expected to put unprecedented pressure on networking and IT infrastructure. Any downtime could cause a decline in sales and brand equity for the company and its thousands of partners.</p>
<h2>Unexpected Digital Acceleration</h2>
<p>Two years ago, ZOZO Technologies calculated it would need hundreds of servers to carry out tasks. To avoid costly upfront investments, ZOZO Technologies shifted to a <a href="https://www.vmware.com/topics/glossary/content/hybrid-cloud">hybrid cloud</a> model. It seamlessly integrated <a href="https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws">VMware Cloud on AWS</a> into existing infrastructure. This transformation helped ZOZO Technologies process three times more traffic during its 2019 winter sale. Beyond expanding infrastructure capabilities, enabling remote work was also critical to avoid overcrowding on public transport systems during the Games.</p>
<p>The company was in the middle of testing contingency plans when the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the Games. What started as a business decision to buffer networking challenges has become critical to keeping the company’s lights on. And in the most startling and unexpected manner, the pandemic also accelerated demand for online shopping and set the stage for the retail industry’s transformation.<a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></p>
<h2>Understanding Fashion’s Place in Japanese Society</h2>
<p>As one of the most fashion-forward capitals in the world, Tokyo’s brick-and-mortar fashion retailers are at the epicenter of Japan’s mainstream and diverse subcultures. Retailers represent a way of life and service, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Fast fashion” retailers that champion comfort and individualization within a fuss-free, self-service culture.</li>
<li>Custom suits to conform with the strict codes of conduct in corporate Japan.</li>
<li>Traditional kimono shops that celebrate individual milestones, while doubling as a symbol of class and stature.</li>
</ul>
<p>But the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rethink of retail in Japan, a country where sales are tied to so many factors, like experience, location and the intangible ideals of self-expression.</p>
<h2>Stepping Up to Take the Lead</h2>
<p>As Tokyo entered an uncertain lockdown, many brands weren’t ready for online selling, despite the impact on their bottom lines.</p>
<p>“Our goals are not just to sell the clothing from those brands online, but to reconsider the idea of real shops and to assist their teams to make best use of their abilities. That is our way of helping the fashion brands that are working with us,” said Masayuki Imamura, former CTO, ZOZO Technologies.</p>
<p>Careful inventory planning and pricing strategy are just as important as ensuring a pleasant shopping experience.</p>
<h2>Elevating Customer Experience</h2>
<p>To accelerate innovation, ZOZO Technologies created teams focused on new customer solutions.</p>
<p>“There are two fields where we continuously invest. The first one is optimization of trying on clothes online,” shares Mr. Imamura.</p>
<p>ZOZO Technologies introduced ZOZOSUIT, where customers take measurements with a smartphone camera. A 3D-model is created instantly, and body measurements are saved on the ZOZOTOWN mobile app.</p>


<p><strong>Other innovations include:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>ZOZOMAT helps customers find the right shoes for every occasion.</li>
<li>WEAR is Japan’s largest fashion app that offers fashion and styling content. Users can post their outfits as well as search, view and save those of other users. The most popular users with over 2 million followers are certified as a “WEARISTA”.</li>
<li>ZOZOUSED is an online shop for secondhand/vintage apparel with more than 800,000 items, from 9,000 brands, at any given time.</li>
<li>Artificial intelligence automatically filters through more than 730,000 items and suggest similar items for purchase.</li>
</ul>
<p>Mr. Imamura said, “We want to apply big data and artificial intelligence to optimize the shopping experience. We have built ZOZO Research, a center that brings together specialists to conduct fashion-related research that helps bring our vision to life.”</p>
<h2>Staying Committed to Digital Transformation</h2>
<p>To take a company forward, businesses must understand changing markets and shifting consumer mindsets.</p>
<p>“While our innovations have already helped us to achieve more sales, we are continuing to think about new strategies. Businesses have undergone a big change, and we must change our mindset to meet the challenges head on. The continuation of our business was possible because we accurately predicted the future impact on retail through reversed calculation,” Mr. Imamura said.</p>
<p>When asked what advice ZOZO Technologies would provide to retailers on the cusp of making the decision to digitalize, Mr. Imamura said, “We&#8217;re here today because we managed to invest in relevant areas. We cannot guarantee what will happen in the future, but our best opportunity is to continue to invest in digital transformation. The more you do it, the better it gets.”</p>
<p>Even as the pandemic hangs over the future like a specter, Japan’s fashion retail is entering a new era, and its future looks brighter than ever.</p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> <em>Between 2015-2017, more patents were filed in Tokyo, Japan, than any city in the world. Source: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/why-japanese-innovation-is-surging-ahead-of-the-2020-olympics/">How Japan is using technology for the 2020 Olympics</a>, World Economic Forum, June 24, 2019.</em></p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> <em><a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/10/business/coronavirus-japan-shoppers-buy-online/">Virus pandemic pushes Japan’s shoppers to finally buy online</a>, Japan Times, April 10, 2020.</em></p>


Planning for the Tokyo Olympics unexpectedly prepared Japan’s largest online fashion store for the COVID-19 pandemic.

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<p>It’s no surprise that COVID-19 changed—and accelerated—most organizations’ IT plans. As a result, technology executives are increasing their investments in digital technologies. They’re also speeding up what were once multi-year technology plans.</p>
<p>Conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights in association with VMware, <a href="https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/microsites/cio-vantage/vmware-global-mit-executive-study.pdf">Digital Acceleration in the Time of Coronavirus</a><sup>1</sup> reveals how technology strategy contributed to business resiliency and growth. The survey showed that companies ahead of the digital curve were best positioned for success at the onset of the pandemic and in the uncertain times ahead.</p>
<p>In one of the first signs of changing priorities resulting from the crisis, companies quickly shifted to accommodate a surge in the remote workforce. Before COVID-19, on average, only 8% of workforces regularly worked remotely. During the pandemic, this shot up to an average of 27%.</p>
<p>Globally, 75% of respondents believe digital transformation efforts were accelerated by the pandemic. One-third anticipate budget increases for digital investments. Now, IT teams plan to address the shortcomings exposed during the pandemic by prioritizing:</p>
<ol>
<li>Cloud.</li>
<li>Modern apps and infrastructure.</li>
<li>Cybersecurity.</li>
</ol>
<p><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-23544" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Survey_digital-transformation-accelerated-by-pandemic_VMware-RADIUS.png" alt="" width="936" height="152" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Survey_digital-transformation-accelerated-by-pandemic_VMware-RADIUS.png 936w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Survey_digital-transformation-accelerated-by-pandemic_VMware-RADIUS.png?resize=300,49 300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Survey_digital-transformation-accelerated-by-pandemic_VMware-RADIUS.png?resize=768,125 768w" sizes="(max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px" /></p>
<p>For many, COVID-19 challenged existing business continuity plans. Nearly two-thirds (63%) indicate they had business-continuity plans in place prior to the crisis. However, for many, these were oriented toward traditional disaster recovery. Fewer than half (46%) felt their plans were effective when attempting to cope with the shutdowns.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-23545" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/survey_successful-business-continuity-plans_VMware-RADIUS.png" alt="" width="936" height="167" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/survey_successful-business-continuity-plans_VMware-RADIUS.png 936w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/survey_successful-business-continuity-plans_VMware-RADIUS.png?resize=300,54 300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/survey_successful-business-continuity-plans_VMware-RADIUS.png?resize=768,137 768w" sizes="(max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px" /></p>
<h2>Global Industry Priorities</h2>
<p>Industry-specific themes also emerged across regions. Removing decades-long barriers, healthcare—more than any other industry—is accelerating digital transformation in response to COVID-19. In financial services, there’s evidence that mobile applications are becoming the foremost destination for customer service. Nearly all surveyed financial services leaders (98%) said they’re increasing or maintaining focus on digital-first customer experiences within applications.</p>
<h3>Healthcare</h3>
<p>More than half of healthcare organizations surveyed (51%) are increasing patient experience investments. The most critical is telehealth services worldwide, filling a much-needed gap in serving healthy populations as they care for the sick. Popular solutions include virtual desktops and wearables that can enhance care provider engagement and patient outcomes. To learn more, read the <a href="http://blogs.vmware.com/industry-solutions/2020/12/15/mit-technology-review-8-trends-shaping-health-it/">healthcare insights blog</a>.</p>
<h3>Financial Services</h3>
<p>Almost two-thirds of financial services organizations (65%) said they’ve expanded agile practices and continuous delivery (CD) methods in response to new modern app demands. Securing those apps is also being prioritized. More than half (53%) instituted “secure-by-design” application development. Both initiatives are critical to enabling apps to become the main customer experience destination for banking services. To learn more, read the <a href="https://blogs.vmware.com/industry-solutions/2020/12/15/mit-technology-review-impact-of-digital-investments-on-financial-services-organizations-throughout-pandemic/">financial services insights blog</a>.</p>
<h3>Government</h3>
<p>For government leaders, the number one priority and challenge is protecting against cyberattacks and securing data and information. Close to half of respondents indicate they’re allocating a “significant” share (defined as more than 25%) of their IT budgets to security and threat management.</p>
<p>Many are choosing solutions that build in security, rather than bolt it on, from data centers to multi-cloud and endpoint devices. At the same time, agencies increasingly look to boost agility and efficiency with public cloud and FedRamp Authorized cloud services that power and secure enterprise infrastructure and apps. To learn more, read the <a href="http://blogs.vmware.com/industry-solutions/2020/12/15/mit-technology-review-8-government-it-trends/">government insights blog</a>.<strong> </strong></p>
<h3>Telecommunications Providers</h3>
<p>Services delivered across networks will drive a more fully connected world. Telecommunications providers are enabling customers across all industries to reimagine application development and delivery. To help consumers and enterprises alike realize the potential of 5G, telco providers must first continue to invest in their own digital transformation—from core to edge.</p>
<h3>Retail</h3>
<p>During the pandemic, distributed work capabilities quickly turned into business continuity must-haves. When asked about the greatest employee experience challenge, most retail leaders cited providing employees with the physical equipment necessary to be productive remotely. This includes capabilities provided by the combination of personal devices and secure digital workspaces.</p>
<h3>Manufacturing</h3>
<p>Nearly three-quarters of manufacturing IT and business technology decision makers (73%) placed employee efficiency and workflow automation as the highest priorities. By achieving efficiency gains through modernizing infrastructure, cost-conscious manufacturers can keep improving IT operations.</p>
<h2>Becoming Future Ready</h2>
<p>COVID-19 work-from-home orders and shutdowns provided sudden, dramatic proof of the value of digital technologies. Now facing new business pressures, new enterprise technology priorities are emerging.</p>
<p>Future-ready organizations possess technologies that are highly flexible and capable of supporting remote operations and distributed workforces. And in these uncertain times, these enterprises are best positioned to succeed.</p>
<p>To learn more, download “Digital Acceleration in the Time of Coronavirus”:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/microsites/cio-vantage/vmware-digital-acceleration-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-north-america.pdf">Outlook North America</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/microsites/cio-vantage/vmware-digital-acceleration-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-europe.pdf">Outlook Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/microsites/cio-vantage/vmware-digital-acceleration-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-asia-pacific.pdf">Outlook Asia-Pacific</a></li>
</ul>
<p>And be sure to check out the <a href="https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/microsites/cio-vantage/vmware-global-mit-executive-study.pdf">Top 10 Trends Shaping IT Resilience</a> for a roundup of the most salient global insights from the study.</p>
<p><em><sup>1. Global survey of 600 C-level and IT executives, as well as in-depth interviews from public- and private-sector organizations in three regions—Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America—conducted between June-August 2020.</sup></em></p>


Global report shows that IT organizations with an existing digital-first operating model proved to be best-prepared for disruption. Explore the findings.

IT organizations with an existing digital-first operating model proved to be best-prepared for disruption. Explore the findings.

Global Survey Ties Digital Investments to Growth, Business Resiliency

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Survey Ties Digital Investments to COVID-19 Business Resiliency, Growth

<p><em>The Save A Lot IT team faced a tough challenge after splitting away from its parent company. Here are the 10 IT principles that fueled their digital transformation, from <a href="https://www.vmware.com/solutions/sd-wan.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SD-WAN</a> to accelerating cloud innovation.</em></p>
<p>Discount grocer <a href="https://savealot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Save A Lot</a> has a powerful vision: To be America’s most loved discount retailer by adding unmatched value to local communities.</p>
<p>“We’re a hard discount retailer,” says Jonathan Stewart, Save A Lot’s director of IT infrastructure and software services. “Forty years ago, (Save A Lot founder) Bill Moran said, ‘I want to provide the common folk, the people that don’t make a lot of money, with fresh vegetables and fresh fruit at a discount price.’”</p>
<p>Fast forward to today. Now, the St. Louis, Mo.-based retail chain has over 1,000 stores and 7,000 employees in 33 U.S. states. To keep costs low for its customers, Save A Lot economizes the size of its store and variety of offerings. This helps them keep overhead low, while providing high-quality, national and private-brand products to their customers.</p>
<p>However, four decades in business means the company experienced challenges common to many retailers. In 2016, Save A Lot transitioned ownership from former parent company SuperValu, Inc. to private equity firm Onex Corp., a change that ushered in significant transformation for the business.</p>
<p>“The business went first. We started remodeling all our stores,” says Stewart.</p>


<p>While the company since completed a business recapitalization and is now privately held by a number of large investors, including CDPQ, JP Morgan, Arbour Lane, Voya and Bain Capital, the need to accelerate change through the company’s IT and digital technologies has remained.</p>
<h2>Facing a Difficult Digital Transformation</h2>
<p>The Save A Lot IT team boiled down their daunting new reality into two primary challenges:</p>
<ol>
<li>Slow business processes due to legacy IT systems.</li>
<li>Reliance upon legacy technology.</li>
</ol>
<p>The largest hurdle? Save A Lot no longer owned a significant portion of its infrastructure. The IT team needed to migrate data, apps and processes securely and efficiently. And if that wasn’t difficult enough, they also had to equip stores with the modern technology needed to function in today’s digital consumer age.</p>
<p>“When I got to Save A Lot a year ago, I felt like I was walking into a time machine. We still have a mainframe. We still have AS/400. We still have batch jobs that are copying data from one database to another for no apparent reason. But all the laptops were Windows 10,” Stewart laughs. “You had all this legacy technology, and then you had Windows 10.”</p>
<p>Save A Lot’s IT team took stock of the legacy systems, market trends and customer demands to develop three key priorities:</p>
<ol>
<li>Take ownership of the network, particularly regarding <a href="https://www.vmware.com/solutions/sd-wan.html">SD-WAN.</a></li>
<li>Accelerate the transition to the cloud.</li>
<li>Reduce costs.</li>
</ol>
<p>These three priorities resulted in the team developing its 10 IT principles to enable their business.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-22599" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg" alt="" width="2000" height="1095" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg 2000w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg?resize=300,164 300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg?resize=768,420 768w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg?resize=1024,561 1024w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Save-A-Lot_10-IT-Principles-to-Enable-the-Business.jpg?resize=1536,841 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" /></p>
<p>“Our customers’ experience translates into whether they come back, whether they say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to check out Save A Lot.’ This is key, all the way down to IT,” says Stewart. “Our IT consumers are also on the business side of things. So, we want to be customer-focused, even with our business partners.”</p>


<p>A new global survey conducted before and during the global pandemic finally closes the decades-long debate about digital transformation.</p>

Save A Lot faced a tough challenge after splitting from its parent company. Here are the IT principles that fueled their digital transformation.

Save A Lot faced a tough challenge after splitting from its parent company. Here's how they fueled their digital transformation.

10 IT Principles When Facing A Difficult Digital Transformation

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10 IT Principles When Faced with a Difficult Digital Transformation

Making (or ordering) a meal is now only a click away. But for online grocers and meal-kit businesses, it must be harder than that, right?

<h4>What’s In This Episode</h4>
<ul>
<li>The shared experience of food</li>
<li>Pivoting to online grocers and meal kits</li>
<li>Delivery services’ trifecta for success</li>
<li>Why exceptional digital experiences matter</li>
<li>Environmental impacts</li>
</ul>
<h4>Listen In Your Favorite Podcast Player</h4>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pop-culture-tech-podcast/id1478163480" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple Podcasts</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://playmusic.app.goo.gl/?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&#038;isi=691797987&#038;ius=googleplaymusic&#038;apn=com.google.android.music&#038;link=https://play.google.com/music/m/Iylp6irog4vdpn2rcqxlh5hb57i?t%3DPop_Culture_Tech_Podcast%26pcampaignid%3DMKT-na-all-co-pr-mu-pod-16" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" name="&#038;lpos=apps_scodevmw : 26">Google Podcasts</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-pop-culture-tech-podcast-49070049/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" name="&#038;lpos=apps_scodevmw : 27">iHeart Podcast Network</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://www.soundcloud.com/pop-culture-tech-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" name="&#038;lpos=apps_scodevmw : 28">SoundCloud</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6MfWYc7aNuU7U3VG5glVAP" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" name="&#038;lpos=apps_scodevmw : 29">Spotify</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=458687&#038;refid=stpr" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Stitcher</a><strong> </strong></li>
</ul>
<h4>Featuring (In Order of Appearance)</h4>
<p><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-22288" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Online-Grocery-Meal-Kits_Pop-Culture-Tech-Podcast_Guest-Lineup-1024x731.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="731" /></p>
<h4>Recipe for Success: Food, Purpose &#038; Technology</h4>
<p>Food is a universal, shared experience. Yet like work, school and other activities of daily life, the pandemic radically changed consumer buying behaviors and eating habits.</p>
<p>For many, more meal preparation at home comes with the anxiety of visiting traditional grocery stores. For others, it revealed new experiences and healthier options—only available online.</p>
<p>That’s been good news for online grocers, such as <a href="https://www.goodeggs.com/sfbay/home" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Good Eggs</a> and <a href="https://www.purplecarrot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Purple Carrot</a>. In the face of the global pandemic, great food, local suppliers and technology are proving a winning combination.</p>
<blockquote class="center">
<p>Nearly half of shoppers are buying more or started buying groceries online due to COVID-19.</p>
<p>—<a href="https://www.supermarketnews.com/online-retail/online-grocery-sales-grow-40-2020">Coresight Research</a></p>
</blockquote>
<h4>A New Model: Local Sourcing and Delivery</h4>


<p>San Francisco-area organic grocery delivery company Good Eggs believes good food is the most powerful force for change.</p>
<p>That’s why the company spent nearly a decade simplifying a complex supply chain with modern technology. This purpose-plus-tech combination powers its warehouse, fulfillment center, buying processes and website. Today, it locally sources only the freshest products from thousands of growers within about a 300-mile radius. And it offers one of the best customer experiences online.</p>
<p>“Shopping experience matters, both pre-COVID and post-COVID. And it should be enjoyable,” says Bentley Hall, Good Eggs’ CEO. He doesn’t believe that age of traditional retail is over, but instead believes, “poor retail experiences will die.”</p>
<p>Understanding that some consumers are practical shoppers and others are true foodies, Good Eggs takes pride in making its shopping experience efficient, relaxing and enjoyable.</p>
<h4>Food for Thought</h4>
<p>Purple Carrot founder and CEO Andy Levitt sees online options as a powerful way to provide people with choice—especially in this time of uncertainty.</p>
<p>“When I think about the joy of cooking—and largely cooking plant-based foods—in a world where so much feels out of control, there is something really nice about controlling what you eat and having a level of control as you cook food for yourself, your family and those people you love.”</p>
<p>At its heart, Levitt describes his plant-based meal kit business as an e-commerce firm with an outstanding development team. The company is “constantly tweaking, evaluating and improving the site and building out new features, including doing testing to improve the flow.”</p>
<h4>Sustainability Concerns</h4>
<p>As organic and plant-based foods become keys to healthy lifestyles, these meal companies also recognize the need to reduce the environmental impact of field-to-table delivery. They provide recycling and upcycling tips, while reminding consumers about the benefits of plant-based choices.</p>
<p>“If you are going to use a meal kit,” says Levitt, advocating for Purple Carrot’s services, choosing a “plant-based diet is far more gentle on the environment than meals requiring a lot of meat or dairy.”</p>
<h4>Cooking Up Joy</h4>
<blockquote class="center">
<p>Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together.</p>
<p>—Food Network star Guy Fieri</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As consumer food shopping behavior continues to change, will more people make healthy and environmentally friendly choices? If yes, Good Eggs and Purple Carrot are just a click away.</p>
<p>After all, a great meal shared with family and friends can lead to joy and good health. And thanks to innovative <a href="https://news.vmware.com/redirect/pop-culture-tech/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">pop culture tech</a>, it also connects us to a community, grounds us in our planet and supports local economies.</p>


Making (or ordering!) a meal is only a click away. But for grocers and meal companies during COVID-19, it must be harder than that, right?

What's For Dinner? Listen to the Pop Culture Tech Podcast

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What's for Dinner? Listen to Pop Culture Tech Podcast #9

What's for Dinner? Listen to #PopCultureTech Podcast

<p><div id="attachment_22243" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22243" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-22243 size-full" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Maribel-Lopez.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="400" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Maribel-Lopez.jpg 400w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Maribel-Lopez.jpg?resize=150,150 150w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Maribel-Lopez.jpg?resize=300,300 300w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /><p id="caption-attachment-22243" class="wp-caption-text">Maribel Lopez, technology industry analyst and strategic advisor, <a href="https://www.lopezresearch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lopez Research</a></p></div></p>
<p>At the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations quickly deployed technologies to enable basic <a href="https://news.vmware.com/nologies/tips-enabling-remote-workforce" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">remote work</a>. But some things just broke when people couldn’t sort out issues face-to-face, says Maribel Lopez, technology industry analyst and strategic advisor at Lopez Research. And that’s forcing leaders to completely rethink how they use enterprise technology.</p>
<p>To meet new and rapidly shifting needs, companies are working to adapt and accelerate digital experience delivery. “Even if they were digital, it’s a <em>new</em> digital,” says Lopez. “So out of this very tragic event, there will be some positive outcomes.”</p>
<h2>How Industries Drive Future-Ready Transformation</h2>
<p>Purely physical processes were obvious targets for change as companies pivoted early in the pandemic to respond to digital-only engagement. A few examples include SaaS-based web conferencing apps and cloud-based e-commerce websites.</p>
<p>Despite the digitization of some key processes, Lopez says, “Now business leaders are being reminded that many processes are still physical and must become digital if their companies are going to thrive.”</p>
<p>Fixing those gaps serves as a catalyst for organizations across industries to take a closer look at what <a href="https://news.vmware.com/digital-transformation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">digital transformation</a> has taken place and what still needs to be done to future ready businesses. Here are a few examples.<strong> </strong></p>
<h3>Healthcare</h3>
<p>Modernization of the healthcare system has been underway for years. Due to the pandemic, however, providers rushed to enable non-essential staff to work from home. They also built pop-up hospitals so essential doctors and nurses could better care for patients.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, healthcare organizations are launching app-based consumer solutions, such as telehealth services, to ensure the continued health of patients and vulnerable populations.</p>
<h3>Retail</h3>
<p>Out of necessity, the retail industry shifted its focus to help shoppers get the products they need as quickly as possible—online, at curbsides, and in stores. To completely transform, though, requires a better understanding of the end-to-end customer experience, for example, why loyal consumers add to shopping carts but never complete a transaction, and the building of modern apps with associate-friendly workflows such as real-time inventory checking.</p>
<h3>Financial services</h3>
<p>In an industry built on relationships, in-branch banking and in-office advisor experiences once dominated. Personal engagement and regulatory requirements created a culture of heavily controlled IT. Now, financial services teams are looking for ways to stay in compliance, while supporting distributed advisors and clients from anywhere.</p>
<h3>Education</h3>
<p>The pandemic forced colleges, universities, and primary and secondary schools across the world to move learning online. This proved the distance learning model can work, but it will need to be further examined and modified to prioritize equity for all.</p>
<h2>The <em>New</em> Digital: The App Experience as the Customer Experience</h2>
<p><div id="attachment_22203" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://news.vmware.com/nologies/businesscontinues"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22203" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-22203 size-medium" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/VMware-Truth-About-Transformation-r6v1-Intro_16x9-300x169.gif" alt="" width="300" height="169"></a><p id="caption-attachment-22203" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://news.vmware.com/nologies/businesscontinues">Dive deeper into a new global survey that reveals the &#8220;Truth About Digital Transformation.&#8221;</a></p></div></p>
<p>While we know now that digital transformation isn’t failing, per say, have organizations fully embraced the idea that the app experience is the customer experience?</p>
<p>Lopez isn’t so sure. “I think the app experience was always supposed to be part of the customer experience. What happened was the rest of our experience was so broken that in most cases, we couldn’t do cross-channel well.”</p>
<p><strong>She cites two examples:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>When ordering products via the web is faster than navigating 10-plus clicks on a smartphone, why would people use an app?</li>
<li>When changing airline reservations is faster through the app, why would people pick up the phone?</li>
</ul>
<p>True digital transformation means delivering the same one-or-two click experience across every channel—web, mobile devices, tablets and more. Lopez believes, “Teams now have to focus on pervasive experience. No matter where you are, you have a similar feeling that you can get the same things done no matter the device.”</p>
<p>Traditionally, developers have been unable to give people everything they can get in a PC experience because so many processes are highly customized,” she says.</p>
<p>Enterprises must step back and examine the parts of each process to find the pieces delivering the value. For example, do customers come to a business for its highly customized supply chain process or its product? Chances are it’s the product, she says. This should be a signal for the organization to reduce some customization in favor of providing more consistent cross-channel experiences.</p>
<h2>The Power of Design Thinking</h2>
<p>The way to uncover an app’s essence is to take complicated applications through a <a href="https://news.vmware.com/nologies/design-thinking-julie-stanford">design thinking process</a>. This ensures teams distill each app to its core value with the optimal workflow—whether that’s enabling dynamic pricing or expense report approvals.</p>
<p>A workflow is an action. And when you see organizations with really good workflows, you’re looking at very good business processes. Under the surface, those workflows touch multiple apps to fully complete a process. Think about service technicians with iPads, for example. They can tap into one app and seamlessly launch three or four different workflows. According to Lopez, this capability “becomes very interesting and very powerful.”</p>
<p>“I see teams redesigning this way now and a big move toward the concept of human-centered design. For example, in automotive companies this is now pervasive thinking, which is really important,” she says.</p>
<p>In short context, connection through integration and cross-channel consistency will make modern apps more impactful and useful. Only then can the app experience truly be the customer experience.</p>
<h2>The Third Dimension: Infrastructure Implications</h2>
<p>Enabling connected workflows in and across apps will require more than development skill sets. “It’s going to take a rethink of infrastructure and security, too,” says Lopez.</p>
<p>When the pandemic hit, nearly all organizations were doing some form of a <a href="https://news.vmware.com/c/cloud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cloud strategy</a>. “Everybody was looking at public, private and hybrid cloud. Everybody was thinking about or already building a multi-cloud strategy,” she says. Multi-cloud involves having parts of infrastructure on-premises and parts in the cloud.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge facing teams was adding and migrating workloads between cloud options. Now that work is different, Lopez believes we’ve entered into “the third dimension, which is some portion of always-distributed workers—but not always the same group of them.”</p>
<p><div id="attachment_22220" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://news.vmware.comcustomer-app-experience-business-success/"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22220" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-22220" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Modern-App-Customer-Experience_VMware-RADIUS-2-300x158.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="158"></a><p id="caption-attachment-22220" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://news.vmware.comcustomer-app-experience-business-success/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Related Story: The Connection Between the App Experience &#038; Customer Experience</a></p></div></p>
<p>Productivity is paramount in all cases, so the infrastructure has to change. Teams can no longer optimize computing resources for work across a single building or campus. Instead, they must consider how to scale resources and end-user access at different periods of time and locations using clouds with virtual desktops (VDI), as an example.</p>
<p>In this new world, IT will have to reimagine what infrastructure gets served from where and how security can be maintained but done differently—without burdening workforces. IT has to consider where workloads live (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google or another cloud platform) and how to take previously locked down workloads to other places. Enterprises need a clear multi-cloud strategy and understanding about how to integrate points that previously weren’t considered part of the corporate enterprise, Lopez says.</p>
<p>As a result of this shared experience, Lopez believes the whole concept of infrastructure and how it’s managed will be more diverse. “Less centralized, but still very directed just not all in the same way,” she says. For example, enabling employees to have access to everything they need will be important. Yet, resources are likely to be delivered a certain way when someone is in the office and a different way when working from home.</p>
<p>Technical support structures must change, too. Without human-to-human interactions, how do employees and customers get queries answered and challenges solved when there is no one to call? This is where chatbots come in, says Lopez. She cites a recent example where chatbot technology enabled the automated distribution of information without going through redundant questions. This streamlined interaction made the person-to-person engagement, once it did happen, more effective.</p>


<h2>The Best Human-First Enterprise Tech Platforms…Wait for It…Aren’t Even Built Yet</h2>
<p>Although teams are trying, Lopez hasn’t seen an ideal human-first technology platform for the enterprise. “They aren’t built yet. But we’re getting closer with some human-first mobile apps and aligned IT and business leaders willing to take on the bigger issue, which is the process,” she says.</p>
<p>It’s possible now to deliver faster, easier access to data and apps in technologies like the <a href="https://news.vmware.com/c/digital-workspace/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">digital workspace</a>. But if the experience with individual apps is still poor, people will be frustrated. Part of the challenge, says Lopez, is terminology, which is often too technical and not human-centric. The other is the end-to-end process.</p>
<p>Technology will need to get simpler and self-service has to become the norm, not the exception. Yet, teams can’t use automation as a crutch to avoid rethinking broken processes, says Lopez. Apps and devices must be so easy that anyone can troubleshoot them. It’s going to be impossible with flex remote working schedules to scale effective tech support at work. And it’ll be even harder for industries like retail to help non-tech savvy customers to navigate grocery shopping online, she says.</p>
<p>Emerging technologies like chatbots and <a href="https://news.vmware.com/artificial-intelligence/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">artificial intelligence</a> can help, she says. But the key to success is on her wish list: better conversational and natural language interfaces.</p>
<h2>Embracing Future-Ready Business</h2>
<p>Despite the debate, digital transformation efforts are succeeding. But it can be even more successful when businesses embrace a <em>new</em> digital. Yet, how they get there will depend on their willingness to envision customer and employee experiences differently. Ultimately, successful future-ready businesses will find the connections and redefine the workflows that matter. And only through this reimagining will app experiences truly become the customer experience.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="The Debate About Digital Transformation" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v_5_v3YV4xY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>


<p>A new global survey reveals that organizations rapidly shifted their digital transformation priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>

At the start of the pandemic, some things worked and others just broke. And that’s forcing leaders to rethink digital transformation.

What the Pandemic Teaches Us About Digital Transformation

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<p><em>Chemist Warehouse, Chow Sang Sang, Migros and OFS Highlight How They Have Improved Customer and Employee Experiences with VMware Retail Solutions</em></p>
<p align="left">NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) &#8212; This week at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual show, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a leading innovator in enterprise software, showcased how several customers – including Chemist Warehouse, Chow Sang Sang, Migros and OFS – are partnering with the company to build a digital foundation for modern retail experiences.</p>
<p>In the highly competitive and dynamic retail industry, technology drives almost every step of the retail experience – in-store, warehouses, supply chain, and back offices. VMware Retail Solutions evolve legacy retail infrastructure into modern digital foundations with mobile workflows that can significantly increase customer satisfaction and workforce productivity. With VMware, retailers customize engagement while improving IT efficiency, agility, and performance from core to cloud to edge.</p>
<p><strong> Accelerate Retail IT Delivery</strong>  <br />Modern IT powers exceptional customer experiences. By speeding digital and in-store service delivery and reducing complexity, VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) solutions empower retailers to improve processes from checkout to supply chain management. Flexible, more secure, and cloud-ready digital infrastructure from VMware improves operational models to help create frictionless retail environments that can accelerate innovation and grow revenue.</p>
<p><strong>Chemist Warehouse</strong> is a provider of pharmaceuticals, health, and beauty products and one of the largest retailers in Australia with over 500 locations within Australia and New Zealand. Like many growing retailers, Chemist Warehouse needed to modernize its IT infrastructure in order to keep up with the speed and scale of the business. The company worked with VMware to virtualize its compute, storage and networking infrastructure with VMware’s suite of SDDC solutions. In doing so, Chemist Warehouse unified and automated these IT environments with the same architectural structure extending from the data center to the pharmacy floor.</p>
<p>“We are committed to finding new and exciting ways to engage customers at every touchpoint – from the moment they walk into a store until they walk out, and beyond,” said Simon Hibbert, General Manager of IT at Chemist Warehouse Group. “The higher levels of standardization and automation achieved through virtualization enabled our team improve the agility and performance of our operations. This optimization ultimately helps us deliver solutions which allow our staff to focus on our customer rather than technology. The VMware portfolio has been instrumental in our agility and has allowed us to scale our store base and offering globally.”</p>
<p><strong>Chow Sang Sang</strong> a premier jewelry retailer in Greater China currently has a retail network of more than 600 stores across the region. To stay at the forefront of the industry, Chow Sang Sang operates a dynamic e-commerce strategy across multiple channels including its online storefront – <a href="http://chowsangsang.com">chowsangsang.com</a>. Its online business created a significant new revenue stream, but also drove such a surge in demand that its legacy IT infrastructure was unable to support. Chow Sang Sang required a massive scale of transformation, from underlying infrastructure and hardware to storage and software.</p>
<p>VMware SDDC and VMware Enterprise PKS solutions on Dell EMC VxRail suited its IT transformation and development requirements. VMware SDDC solutions provide the ideal architecture for private, public, and hybrid clouds while VMware Enterprise PKS dynamically and more securely automates Kubernetes-based containerized applications in multi-cloud environments. With built-in critical production capabilities such as high availability, auto-scaling, health checks and self-healing, VMware Enterprise PKS optimizes computing resources among applications to maintain their desired state. This helps better enable the high availability of Chow Sang Sang&#8217;s e-commerce applications. Finally, running on the pre-tested and fully-integrated Dell EMC VxRail, Chow Sang Sang no longer worries about compatibility, reliability and performance issues.</p>
<p><strong> Empower the Retail Workforce and Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences </strong> <br />Today&#8217;s shoppers demand personalized, anytime, anywhere experiences. With VMware solutions, retailers can quickly deliver sales and inventory applications, marketing promotions, and customer service tools to any device, running any operating system seamlessly while enabling more secure, remote access to information. By transforming shopping experiences with robust service delivery everywhere—at endpoints, in stores, and beyond—VMware helps nurture brand loyalty.</p>
<p><strong>Migros</strong> is one of the largest supermarket chains in Turkey with a presence in more than 81 cities across the country. The company aims to meet customer demands fast by reaching them through various channels according to their lifestyles and to help them have a unique shopping experience. In order to achieve this, Migros employees needed a way to access data on products and stock anytime and anywhere in a secure way.</p>
<p>The company partnered with VMware to implement VMware Workspace ONE, a digital workspace platform that manages and better secures all devices such as handheld terminals, tablets used by store associates and employee-owned mobile devices. Migros has eliminated many complexities associated with endpoint management across all platforms as well as leveraged a single platform to manage all apps and devices, regardless if the device is company- or employee-owned. In addition to providing employees with choice and flexibility, Migros has also experienced efficiency gains when it comes to software and application delivery and management.</p>
<p>“Thanks to Workspace ONE, the software updates that used to take weeks, are now smoothly completed in an hour. This has led to a substantial decrease in the number of IT support calls and a substantial increase in internal customer satisfaction,” explained Murat Zobu, IT infrastructure and operational system manager, Migros.</p>
<p><strong> Better Protect Retail Data and Brand </strong> <br />Cybercriminals actively target retail businesses to steal valuable customer financial information. With VMware Carbon Black, retailers can better protect their increasingly perimeter-less environments, including data centers, customer systems, and endpoints, with purpose-built, multi-layered security that better protects customer data.</p>
<p><strong>OFS</strong> is a family-owned contract furniture manufacturer based in Huntingburg, Indiana and operates retail showrooms in eight cities across the U.S. After the IT team found itself spending too much time responding to false positive threat alerts and less time identifying and remediating legitimate threats, the company decided it was time for a new security solution.</p>
<p>With VMware Carbon Black, OFS transformed and improved its backend technology with a security-centric focus, enabling the company to confidently and swiftly deliver their products and services. VMware Carbon Black’s cloud-based endpoint protection platform (EPP), coupled with VMware Carbon Black’s managed alert monitoring and triage services, provides OFS with the expert threat validation its leadership team needs. For the OFS IT team, the time spent responding to alerts and malware has decreased significantly since using VMware Carbon Black.</p>
<p>Jeremy Wilkins, security technology administrator at OFS, explained, “Our time to value with VMware Carbon Black was almost instantaneous. I’m spending less time tracking down false positives, and spending more time triaging and acting on legitimate threats. We don’t bog down our internal network with legacy virus updates.”</p>
<p><strong> Visit Us at NRF </strong> <br />To learn more about how VMware is helping retailers enable the store of the future, visit the VMware booth (#1510, Level 1) and Dell Technologies booth (#1219, Level 1) at NRF or browse <a href="http://www.vmware-industry-solutions.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">www.vmware-industry-solutions.com</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Additional Resources </strong></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>Learn more about VMware Retail Solutions at <a href="http://www.vmware-industry-solutions.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">www.vmware-industry-solutions.com</a>.</li>
<li>Bookmark the <a href="https://blogs.vmware.com/industry-solutions/retail/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">VMware Industry Solutions blog</a></li>
<li>Follow VMware on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/vmware/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vmware/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/vmwarenews" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>About VMware </strong> <br />VMware software powers the world’s complex digital infrastructure. The company’s cloud, networking and security, and digital workspace offerings provide a dynamic and efficient digital foundation to customers globally, aided by an extensive ecosystem of partners. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to being a force for good, from its breakthrough innovations to its global impact. For more information, please visit <a href="https://www.vmware.com/company.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://www.vmware.com/company.html</a>.</p>
<p><em>VMware, VMware Enterprise PKS, Workspace ONE and Carbon Black are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Media Contact</strong> <br />Angela Leaf                                                                        <br />VMware Global Communications                             <br />Phone: +1 860 480 3367                                 <br /><a href="mailto:aleaf@vmware.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">aleaf@vmware.com</a>                      </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fd4b8841-2f20-417e-a7d7-74f5805949fc"> <img loading="lazy" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/vmware-inc-259492564616-jpg.jpg" alt="VMware,_Inc.-259492564616.jpg" width="150" height="44" border="0" /> </a></p>
<p>Source: VMware, Inc.</p>


VMware Helps Retailers Digitally Transform Brand Experiences to Enable Intelligent Stores - VMware News and Stories

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<p>Five years ago, a group of Google employees turned an internal technology into an open source project. Their goal was to help businesses adopt containers, which they believed was the future of computing. Over a relatively short timeframe, Kubernetes grew from version 1.0 to a major enterprise technology. Today, Kubernetes is known among developers, startups and enterprises alike as the standard for modern, <a href="https://news.vmware.com/cloud-native-apps/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cloud-native applications</a>.</p>
<p>The momentum behind the enterprise adoption of Kubernetes is due in part to the remarkable rise of containers in the enterprise. Even global enterprises are moving fast to explore the benefits and to work through operational challenges.</p>


<p>Here’s an example of how an enterprise called Domino’s Pizza thinks through their container strategy and the potential business impact of adopting Kubernetes.</p>
<h1>Pizza Delivery, Disrupted</h1>
<p>There’s a well-known saying that “every company is a tech company.” Domino’s exemplifies this so well that the world’s largest pizza delivery and carryout chain is known as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/11/04/359829824/dominos-becomes-a-tech-company-that-happens-to-make-pizza" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a tech company that <em>happens</em> to make pizza</a>.”</p>
<p>The company makes splashy headlines with ambitions to deliver pizzas with driverless cars and drones, launch in-vehicle ordering apps for connected cars and process orders over the phone with artificial intelligence.</p>
<p>All in all, Domino’s currently offers 15 digital ways to order pizza, from web and mobile apps to social media and virtual assistants. More than half of global retail sales come from digital channels.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_20606" style="width: 1930px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20606" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-20606" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg" alt="dominos_business_innovation" width="1920" height="1318" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg 1920w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg?resize=300,206 300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg?resize=768,527 768w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg?resize=1024,703 1024w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_business_innovation.jpg?resize=1536,1054 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /><p id="caption-attachment-20606" class="wp-caption-text">Domino&#8217;s constantly experiments with new technologies to improve the pizza delivery experience, such as self-driving delivery vehicles.</p></div></p>
<p>To double sales and add 2,000 U.S. stores by 2025, Domino’s constantly disrupts the pizza-ordering process to ensure nothing disrupts the pizza’s journey to the customer. To continuously and rapidly innovate the customer experience, the Domino’s team must be as fast to experiment with new technologies as it aims to deliver pizzas.</p>
<p>How does Domino’s deliver so many new solutions, features and updates, while it’s hot? By cultivating an experimental culture of innovation.</p>
<p>“Innovative technologies can be leveraged fruitfully if and only if the employees are given freedom by the CIOs to try and inject them in their organization’s delivery model in the quest to conquer the changing dynamics of customer behavior,” Kevin Vasconi executive vice president and chief information officer at Domino’s wrote in <a href="https://travel-hospitality.cioreview.com/cioviewpoint/the-changing-dynamics-of-customer-delivery-model-nid-24815-cid-40.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CIOReview</a>.</p>
<p>Another way is by modernizing technologies and processes for developing the applications at the heart of the company’s decade-long pizza turnaround and digital transformation.</p>
<h1>Adapting Apps to the Times</h1>
<p>Applications play a significant role in the Domino’s business strategy. Domino’s drives sales, minimizes costs and creates a competitive advantage through personalized, transparent and convenient application experiences for customers.</p>
<p><a href="https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/06/news/companies/dominos-pizza-hut-papa-johns/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CNN Business reports</a>:</p>


<p>Domino’s intends to create new business value and speed their time to market by rewriting core applications to run as microservices.</p>
<h2>Breaking Down Apps into Microservices</h2>
<p>With a microservice architecture, developers work on applications in pieces (each service is a single function of an application), so it’s easier and faster to build, test and maintain applications. As business needs change, developers can quickly modify and scale these modular-like applications.</p>
<p>Modern applications run as microservices must be continuously integrated and continuously deployed, which can be complex to manage. So, developers often “package” microservices — including all the components to consistently run a service — into simplified, portable and lightweight containers.</p>
<p>Because applications are broken down into separate functions, multiple teams typically develop a single application. Using containers, teams can easily share and access everything needed for a service to co-develop an application across environments and teams.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_20607" style="width: 1893px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20607" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-20607" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg" alt="dominos_cloud-native_application_development" width="1883" height="1920" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg 1883w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg?resize=294,300 294w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg?resize=768,783 768w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg?resize=1004,1024 1004w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/dominos_cloud-native_application_development.jpg?resize=1506,1536 1506w" sizes="(max-width: 1883px) 100vw, 1883px" /><p id="caption-attachment-20607" class="wp-caption-text">Technology is so vital to Domino’s that about half of the workforce at headquarters work in software and analytics.</p></div></p>
<h2>Standardizing on a Container Platform</h2>
<p>Dominos teams are modernizing these core applications in-house with microservices, but each team uses a different platform. To take full advantage of the benefits of microservices and containers, leaders knew they had to standardize on one scalable, secure container platform across the organization.</p>
<p>Development, operations and security teams at Domino’s jointly explored a variety of solutions. What do developers, operations managers and security leaders agree matter most in a container platform?</p>
<p>Most importantly, the teams need:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Container Lifecycle Management:</strong> Managing so many microservices and containers can be cumbersome. IT wants to automate functions, like patches and upgrades, to make operations and maintenance as simple as possible without downtime.</li>
<li><strong>Networking and Security: </strong>Naturally, the Domino’s IT organization wants the most robust networking and advanced security capabilities available integrated into their container environments.</li>
<li><strong>Multi-Cloud Flexibility:</strong> In further preparations to adapt to change, IT wants the flexibility to run containerized apps not only on a software-defined data center today but also potentially on public clouds in the future.</li>
</ul>
<p>The three teams chose a comprehensive, production-grade Kubernetes distribution platform with enterprise security features and full lifecycle management support. Now, with access to Kubernetes and production support, Domino’s is evaluating the feasibility and level of effort to convert current systems and processes to a container-based architecture.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_20608" style="width: 1310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20608" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-20608" src="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps.png" alt="Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps" width="1300" height="800" srcset="https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps.png 1300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps.png?resize=300,185 300w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps.png?resize=768,473 768w, https://news-editor.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dominos_online_in-story_modern_apps.png?resize=1024,630 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1300px) 100vw, 1300px" /><p id="caption-attachment-20608" class="wp-caption-text">By standardizing on a container platform, Domino’s developers will be able to efficiently co-develop modern apps to improve the customer experience both online and in stores.</p></div></p>
<h1>Can Containers Really Be This Easy to Manage?</h1>
<p>Domino’s continues to test workflows leveraging container-based technology to expedite the application modernization process and evaluate the impact on business goals. So far, the teams are happy with the results.</p>
<p>“Can it really be this easy?” asks one employee.</p>


Ashley Speagle

Domino’s Pizza explores a container strategy for cloud-native application development by adopting Kubernetes in the enterprise.

Cloud-Native Application Development at Domino's | VMware RADIUS

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Retail