CA Technologies: UX is the difference between a runaway success and abject failure

Software firm advises organisations to focus on user experience or risk wasting their investment in digital

Applications' user experience is the difference between success and failure.

That's the opinion of Duncan Bradford, vice president EMEA presales at CA Technologies, speaking at a Computing web seminar today entitled "User experience in hybrid cloud - what you see is what you get".

"UX [User eXperience] is the difference between a runaway success and abject failure," said Bradford. "You need to invest in the UX or your investment in digital will be wasted," he added.

Also speaking at the event was Ray Bricknell, managing director of cloud vendor ratings firm Behind Every Cloud. He explained that younger generations expect the kind of enjoyable user experience that they get from slick consumer applications.

"If you look at the consumer experience - centennials and millennials have the desire to use technology to conduct the business of their lives. They don't even use email often, they use applications and interact with one another that way. On the corporate side, that investment is driven by a desire to service customers in as efficient and pleasant a way as possible, whilst delivering good customer service."

Computing's own research into the area found that most respondents indicated that on-demand scalability is the main benefit of hybrid cloud, with lower operational and management costs just below.

Bradford agreed that on-demand scalability is one of the most touted benefits, and added that it's a capability from every flavour of cloud, not just hybrid.

"It links back to the UX and digital transformation," he argued. "Agility drives development processes, but also drives operations as well. On-demand scalability gives an area of agility you don't have in a normal data centre.

"If someone asked me for 1,000 servers tomorrow, we could get it using a cloud provider. Or you could say let me get approval on this purchase order, place the order with a supplier, find racking space, and by that time the business edge has gone."

Bricknell advised firms to use more than one cloud supplier, even if one of those suppliers is the internal data centre.

"Spread yourself across several cloud providers to minimise risk, in case one goes bust," he said. "But don't forget your internal capability. Have you ever heard of a firm's internal IT department going broke?"