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, according to the results of a new study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).
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 EMC shows 95% 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 siloed 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 Danny Tam, President of EMC Greater China . "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 organizations’ 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%): falls short on many – if not all – of the dimensions of IT Transformation in the ESG study
- Stage 2 – Emerging (42%): showing progress in IT Transformation but having minimal deployment of modern data center technologies
- Stage 3 – Evolving (41%): showing commitment to IT Transformation and having a moderate deployment of modern data center technologies and IT delivery methods
- Stage 4 – Transformed (5%): furthest along in IT Transformation initiatives
The majority of respondents (71%) agree that IT Transformation is essential to ongoing business competitiveness. Of the “Transformed” companies, 85% 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% 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%) Exceeded revenue targets last year, more than 2X the least mature
- Are 8X 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 (7X more likely than the least mature)
- Are 7X 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 (6X 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% of all respondents use converged or hyper-converged infrastructure to support applications
- 58% of all respondents have adopted scale-out storage systems in some capacity
- Roughly 50% of respondents are committed to software-defined as a long-term strategy and have begun to implement, evaluate or plan for software-defined technologies
According to ESG, the adoption of modern IT processes - such as self-service provisioning capabilities, running IT like a public cloud and use of DevOps methodologies - can be an attribute of a successfully transformed company. The study found:
- 26% of all respondents have “extensive” or “established” self-service capabilities
- 65% of all respondents have made “excellent” or “acceptable” progress toward providing end users with the same ability to provision IT resources that they can get from a public cloud provider
- 43% of respondents claim “extensive” or “good” adoption of formal DevOps principles and best practices
IT Transformation is often correlated with a more cooperative and effective relationship between IT and the business, which was validated by the research. The study found:
- 36% of IT organizations and their outcomes are evaluated by the C-suite or board of directors monthly, and 38% are evaluated quarterly
- 39% have the most senior IT executive reporting directly to the CEO
- 61% of the least mature organizations indicate their line of business stakeholders view IT as a “stable service provider, but ultimately a cost center”