New IT: Transforming Enterprise Tech with Agile, Automation & Design Thinking
Discover how New IT principles—lightweight architectures, Agile, automation, and design thinking—are reshaping enterprise technology for speed and relevance.
This article was originally published in 2016, and has been updated in 2025.
Discover how New IT principles—lightweight architectures, Agile, automation, and design thinking—are reshaping enterprise technology for speed and relevance. New IT is revolutionizing how enterprises approach technology, driving efficiency, agility, and market responsiveness. In today’s landscape, every company must think like a software company to stay competitive. Industries like transportation have already been disrupted by software-driven innovations—Uber’s app-based model transformed the taxi business without owning vehicles or employing drivers directly. This shift underscores the power of technology in redefining traditional industries.
Let’s explore the core pillars of New IT and how they enable enterprises to deliver faster, more relevant solutions:
Hi guys, AJ here with another blog. Today, I wanted to talk about new IT. This is a subject that I’m really excited about.
New IT is a set of principles or ideas that are focused on changing the way we bring technology solutions to the market.
Today, every company is a software company. If a company doesn’t think they’re a software company, then they’re being disrupted by software companies.
Let’s take an example: the taxi industry. The taxi industry has been around for generations worldwide. This is an industry that’s typically founded on a company purchasing a number of taxis, hiring a number of drivers, and then putting them out on the streets for them to go look for passengers.
Now let’s look at Uber. Almost everybody knows who Uber is; if they haven’t used Uber, then they’ve heard about Uber in the news. Uber is turning the taxi industry on its head. And they’re not doing it by reducing margins or buying better vehicles or changing out the drivers. They’re doing it with a software application, or an app.
Uber’s app enables anybody to download it, sign up, and become a driver. Or they can download it and call an Uber driver right to them. This is a technology solution, and it’s a great example of how software is turning a non-technology industry on its head.
Let’s talk about some of the things that make up new IT, especially with enterprises who are looking to hit the market faster with more relevant solutions.
1. Lightweight architectures.
Lightweight architectures focus on breaking down complex systems into modular microservices—smaller, reusable components that can operate independently. These architectures are easier to understand, maintain, and scale.
These components, when put together, can take up the function of massive systems. At the same time, each of the services are easily understandable, consumable by external systems or applications (other than the primary application), and can be reused in different ways to end with different results, so you’re not programming things from the ground up every time.
For example:
A financial services firm might use microservices to separate customer account management from transaction processing. This modularity allows rapid updates to one service without disrupting others.
Lightweight architectures also reduce computational complexity and costs, making them ideal for resource-constrained environments like mobile applications.
2. Agile development.
Agile development and Scrum methodologies are a philosophy of delivering parts of projects faster. We take that by doing the same thing we did in micro-services, by looking at all of the requirements of an application and breaking them into smaller chunks called stories. These stories are then prioritized by the client stakeholder, who decides which ones are more important than others. These stories are given to a team of developers, who then take a certain amount of stories and develop them in what’s called a sprint.
The goal of each sprint, which is usually timeboxed to about 2 weeks, is to deliver a PSI, a potentially shippable product. That product is something that can be tested and demonstrated to the stakeholders and then validated for functionality and use. In the next sprint, the developer team can either go back and make other fixes or move onto the next set of stories.
By breaking projects into smaller tasks (stories), teams can adapt quickly to changing requirements:
Agile adoption has surged globally, with 86% of teams using its principles to accelerate time-to-market.
Companies practicing Agile report up to 300% productivity gains and 250% better quality compared to traditional methods.
An example: A retail company using Agile could release a new e-commerce feature in weeks instead of months, responding quickly to customer demands.
3. Automation: Efficiency at Scale.
When we talk about automating, we’re focusing primarily on two things: the testing and deployment of the software.
Today, large scale software companies are still deploying complex systems in a way that requires huge amounts of resources. They’re manually taking these systems and running them piece by piece through different stages of production. Once a release is developed, it typically takes weeks if not months to get that out to public release. So we end up burning time having people manually migrating through staging environments and test environments. We have people doing testing by hand, usually large QA teams, who then have to be documented, and then the software goes back to the developers for fixes. It’s long and inefficient.
When we talk about automation, when code is developed and committed, it goes through an automated testing platform that checks everything over. Once that’s past, we get into DevOps tools that will take your code that’s been tested and push it right to production. This means that many times, enterprises and software companies can have nightly product releases to their clients, knowing that it works and that everybody’s up to date. This is great news for enterprises. We can react quickly to the market.
Automation reduces manual errors by up to 52% and increases productivity across departments.
For instance, Salesforce leverages automation to enhance sales productivity by delivering real-time insights through Slack integrations.
4. Design thinking.
This is another core foundation of new IT and the last one I’m going to touch on. Design thinking supersedes everything and asks: How are we coming up with the ideas? How are we thinking about software products and bringing them to market? What is our strategy?
It’s highly collaborative and experimental. It relies on ideation, rapid prototyping, coming up with things, and failing fast. We’re talking about tight release cycles, just like in agile, and getting things to market quickly, making sure that this is actually the path that we want to go down.
Companies using design thinking achieve 50% faster time-to-market and 56% higher financial returns compared to peers.
IBM’s design-led projects have reduced risks by 75%, demonstrating the framework's ability to align products with user expectations.
For instance, Airbnb’s use of design thinking transformed its platform into a seamless experience for both hosts and guests.
Real-World Impact of New IT
The convergence of these principles creates a dynamic ecosystem where enterprises can continuously evolve. Consider these examples:
Healthcare: Automation in patient record management reduces administrative burdens, while Agile enables faster deployment of telemedicine features.
Manufacturing: Lightweight architectures power IoT systems that monitor equipment health in real time.
Finance: Design thinking helps banks reimagine digital interfaces for better customer engagement.
By embracing New IT, organizations can remain agile, innovative, and competitive in an ever-changing market landscape. As we move forward, the ability to adapt quickly and deliver value will define the leaders in every industry.
Have a great weekend! Let’s keep pushing boundaries together.