Interviews

Support: making the temporary a constant

by Mark Rowe

Twenty years ago – and certainly beyond that – IT departments tended to operate quite routinely. Other departments rarely understood what they did, nor did they want to, and they only really got in touch when things went wrong. And assuming that things did not go wrong, everyone was happy and the cycle continued, writes Tom Canning, VP of IoT and Devices at Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu.

Those halcyon days are, of course, a thing of the past. We’re now all much more educated on how a business can be more agile and move forward through technology, collaborating across borders to achieve results in a matter of days, that might previously have taken a year. This is being further fuelled by bi-modal and shadow IT approaches; pockets of innovation within organisations, which can act as prototypes for future IT models.

While there is undoubtedly major benefits to this, which can be seen across the entire enterprise, the burden is still stuck with the IT team. They have to keep the lights on; they have to help facilitate new projects; and there are so many compliance and security issues today that go beyond this. IT departments are being pulled in every direction possible. So why are many software providers letting their most valued customers down?

The update conundrum

Software updates are an established framework that software companies have worked to develop over the years. They consistently launch new releases and as they do, support for older versions fades out. It has simply become the accepted norm. Businesses and consumers are told they’re getting the best and most secure version of the software when updated, and software companies make money in the process. Everybody wins.

But is there not a case to be made for taking greater care of older software versions to better support customers over a longer period of time? They are still important assets and responsible for huge waves of innovation, and yet they are so often cast aside when an update arrives. On the flip side, over the past couple of years, IT departments have faced the likes of GDPR, Spectre, and Meltdown, to name but a few. There needs to be an allowance here that will address the necessary balance.

It’s not just a case of software updates either. As well as the nuances of updating software across potentially thousands of existing devices, the constant streams of software begin to become incompatible with older hardware. If we look at Apple for example, used across many enterprises and consumers alike, Macs made as recently as 2012 do not support the latest OS versions.

Technology is evolving and so is the mission-critical areas of a business that depend on it – so why shouldn’t security support move forward? Enterprises struggle to move swiftly – it’s simply a mechanism; a reality of data centre operations. If you have a large estate of applications, you need to meet and manage all the application owners. You can’t just flick a switch.

Support – and the security it provides across the stack – cannot simply be a moving mirage, in constant need of adaptation like one might expect in updating their mobile phone software. Software companies need to accept their responsibility in this process. Support and security should not be poorer bedfellows of profit and loss sheets. Two years of support is outdated and frankly, just not enough in today’s world.

Facilitating innovation

A decade of support can deliver the simplicity that companies need. Of course a lot can change in a decade, but it will be up to providers to keep up. As the world of IoT and edge computing proliferates, investing in expensive hardware will become a thing of the past. Hardware can consistently evolve and offer new functionality as a result of its underlying software – but only if that software is consistently supported.

The idea that innovation can only be fostered when having the very latest version of everything at your disposal is somewhat of a misconception. Support that can last up to a decade will remove burdens, the need for constant reinvestments in code, and also allow the explorative element of IT to flourish.

It is the responsibility of software companies to value security over sales. By doing so, everything from tiny IoT hardware to cloud applications can be maintained, and the simplicity created will enable IT and devops teams of large enterprises to take on a new approach – continuing to innovate with the ongoing confidence of security.

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