Christo Briedenhann, regional director at Riverbed Technologies, offers chief information officers (CIO) advice on changing their IT infrastructure amidst changes in the IT landscape.
Embrace change (or it will embrace you)
BYOD, mobility, cloud computing and big data. These are all buzzwords that have been bandied around the technology sector and can be singled out as key megatrends dominating the market.
A common thread running through these technologies is user empowerment and the fact, now more so than ever, users have freedom to make their own IT decisions. This can be scary thought for CIOs, who can feel powerless to the number of smartphones, tablets and laptops entering the organisation.
However, much is said of the threats over the opportunities, with the latter underlining how the advent and continued prevalence of these technologies can foster innovation and improve efficiency. The challenge, however, is to embrace change whilst ensuring that repeated adoption of the “next big thing” delivers maximum benefit and optimal value to the business and demonstrable ROI.
Make innovation a ‘business basic’
Organisations acknowledge that the levels of innovation needed to drive their IT strategies forward can only occur by using the right technology. It’s imperative that the C-suite highlight technology as a driver of innovation within the organisation.
Don’t ‘leak’ value
With significant investments being made across a range of technology areas and new technology deployment accounting for 25 per cent of technology spend, the importance of maximising technology spend is evident, yet in practice, new technologies introduced are falling short of their expectation.
Infrastructure is imperative
As more diverse and varied applications are added to the network, IT infrastructures are becoming increasingly convoluted.
This churn can cause issues if your infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle leading-edge applications. This disparity becomes even more prevalent outside of IT, where business executives are demanding new technologies but aren’t tuned into the underlying infrastructure concerns.
Optimise technology investment
New technologies are the driving force behind innovation, and as such, if these applications underperform, so does the business. Particularly during times of austerity, wasted investment can have far-reaching implications for businesses. Almost half (46 per cent) of those surveyed in The Transformers Report said that looking at their spend on IT and networking over the past three years, they could have spent less money and achieved better results for the business.
Make data centre transformation your new ‘mega trend’
As innovation continues to be a top business priority, organisations are increasing their investment in new applications. But, before deciding to invest IT leaders must ensure new applications will meet their performance expectations and not undermine the business goals.
Businesses are investing in the right technology, yet they are not investing in their infrastructure to support the surge in leading-edge applications. IT leaders recognise that data centre performance is a key factor in application failure, yet only in a minority of cases are executives and board members fully mindful of this. It’s time to put data centre transformation on the boardroom agenda.
With applications fully optimised and working effectively organisations can regain their certainty over ROI and continue to use technology to drive innovation across the business.
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