Only 5% of large companies to meet IT requirements of the New Digital Business
Dell EMC announced the results of a new study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), which revealed that a majority of senior IT leaders and decision-making managers of large companies surveyed around the world indicate their organizations have yet to fully embrace the aspects of IT Transformation needed to remain competitive. While there is a clear imperative for companies to transform their legacy IT, digital transformation is becoming the driving force to making IT Transformation a top priority.
However the ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study commissioned by Dell EMC shows 95 percent of survey respondents indicate their organizations are at risk of falling behind a smaller group of industry peers that are transforming their IT infrastructures, processes and delivery methods to accelerate their goals of becoming digital businesses. Many organizations still measure application cycle times in months, if not years; have isolated infrastructures; and continue to grapple with rigid legacy architectures - all barriers to undertaking a successful digital transformation.
“These findings mirror how the vast majority of customers are telling us they need to optimize their existing infrastructures to take advantage of digital-age opportunities,” said Mohammed Amin, Senior Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Dell EMC. “However, the research shows that most respondents are falling behind a small and elite set of competitors who have cracked the IT Transformation code, and they’re competing more vigorously because of it. As organizations progress in their IT Transformation investments, they can overcome the conflict between legacy IT and digital business initiatives to realize their goals, speed time to market and increase competitiveness.”
The ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study was designed to understand the role that IT Transformation plays toward becoming a digital business. ESG employed a research-based, data-driven maturity model to identify different stages of IT Transformation progress and determine the degree to which global organizations have achieved those different stages based on their responses to questions about their organization’s on premise IT infrastructure, processes and organizational alignment.
Based on the global survey responses, the 1,000 participating organizations were segmented into the following four IT Transformation maturity stages: Stage 1 - Legacy (12 percent): Falls short on many - if not all of the dimensions of IT Transformation in the ESG study. Stage 2 - Emerging (42 percent): Showing progress in IT Transformation but having minimal deployment of modern data center technologies. Stage 3 - Evolving (41 percent): Showing commitment to IT Transformation and having a moderate deployment of modern data center technologies and IT delivery methods. Stage 4 - Transformed (5 percent): Furthest along in IT Transformation initiatives.
The majority of respondents (71 percent) agree that IT Transformation is essential to ongoing business competitiveness. Of the “Transformed” companies, 85 percent believe their organizations are in a “very strong” or “strong” position to compete and succeed in their market over the next few years contrasted with 43 percent of the least mature companies. The “Transformed” organizations report the most progress in leveraging IT resources to speed product innovation and time to market; automating manual processes and tasks; and running IT as a profit center rather than a cost center.
These companies: 96 percent exceeded revenue targets last year, more than two times the least mature. Are eight times more likely than the least mature organizations to report a highly cooperative relationship between IT and the business. Made “excellent progress “running IT as a profit center rather than a cost center (seven times more likely than the least mature.) Are seven times more likely than the least mature organizations to have IT viewed by the business as a competitive differentiator. Leverage IT resources to speed product innovation and time to market (six times more likely than the least mature organizations.)
According to ESG, the adoption of modern data center technologies, such as scale-out storage systems and converged/hyper-converged infrastructure, can improve the agility and responsiveness of infrastructure provisioning, IT project delivery and application development. The study found: 54 percent of all respondents use converged or hyper-converged infrastructure to support applications. 58 percent of all respondents have adopted scale-out storage systems in some capacity. Roughly 50 percent of respondents are committed to software-defined as a longterm strategy and have begun to implement, evaluate or plan for software-defined technologies