IT leaders are grappling with how to cost-effectively transform their organization into a digital enterprise even though they are being limited by traditional enterprise thinking. Many struggle to achieve the transformation while simultaneously delivering measurable operational and business improvements and staying strategically relevant, according to a meta-study of 352 surveys analyzed by research firm ISG Insights. “IT leaders feel the pressure, but they and their organizations are bound by traditional enterprise thinking, structures and processes,” wrote authors Alex Baker, Charlie Burns, Ron Exler, Bruce Guptill, Jim Hurley and Stanton Jones. They said IT leaders consider the cloud as the top way to reduce and manage capital and operational costs. They also see the cloud as a way to deliver business-outcome-related ROI. But IT leaders are challenged to quantify ROI, while business leaders call for line-of-business (LOB) improvements. To improve digital transformation, IT organizations are outsourcing more strategic planning and transformation responsibility. While that may speed improvement and deliver more transformation expertise, it could also diminish LOB leaders’ perception of the strategic value of internal IT. See key findings here.
Hybrid Cloud Rising
9% of respondents said they have a hybrid cloud environment, and this will rise to 24% by 2020.
IT Strategy and the Cloud, Part 1
69% of respondents said migrating and building new apps on standardized cloud platforms will yield substantial savings.67% are planning to use professional services within the next two years to assist IT transformation. 63% are replacing applications rather than modernizing them.
IT Strategy and the Cloud, Part 2
63% believe that IT will primarily become a broker of IT enterprise services by 2018. 61% said automation will enable them to reduce IT staff by 20% during the next three years. 59% said that the public cloud is the best choice for 25% of their workloads.
Security and Digital Transformation
More IT leaders are preparing for digital transformation security than they are for widespread digital transformation. 57% of respondents use infrastructure and data security, and 56% use identity and access security.
Inhibitors of Infrastructure Upgrades
Budget imitations: 44%, Difficulty improving ROI: 36%, Lack of internal resources for training and hiring IT staff: 29%:, Lack of staff skills, tools or processes for future environment: 29%
Drivers of IT Infrastructure Transformation
Reduce IT infrastructure costs: 39%, Improve security: 32%, Improve IT service levels: 32%, Respond to new business requirements: 28%,
Technologies With Biggest Impact on Spending
IT operations automation: 43%, Big data analytics: 40%, Private cloud: 36%
Drivers for Application Modernization
Integrate with new platforms and processes: 38%, Respond to business requirements: 38%, Reduce ongoing maintenance costs: 37%, Improve service levels: 36%
Top Emerging Technologies
Data science and big data: 53%, Voice recognition and natural language processing: 37%, Machine learning, AI and cognitive computing: 37%
