Enterprises are on their individual “techquilibrium” journey to run a more digitized organization. But becoming a digital organization is a journey that goes beyond making the enterprise more digital. Many enterprises are pushing more critical workloads to the digital touchpoint to become a digital business. Gartner research shows that 60% of enterprises are currently using the IoT, while 38% plan to deploy at least one IoT use case by year-end 2019. However, as the realities of hybrid digital infrastructures become more pervasive, the scale and complexity of managing them through hybrid digital infrastructure management (HDIM) is becoming a pressing issue for enterprise IT leaders.
Enterprises Are Pushing More Critical Workloads to the Digital Touchpoint
Becoming a digital organization is a journey that involves more than just making the enterprise itself more digital: enterprises also deal with the changing external industry landscape. Digital business transformation is entering a more challenging phase and business leaders feel the ever-expanding pressure to provide customers with digital solutions. Fifty-nine percent of CIOs that participated in Gartner’s 2020 Gartner CIO Survey are articulating the business value of IT and use IT to gain competitive advantage. Hence, one of the major objectives CIOs face today is to enable their transformation to a digital business initiative, which has taken on a new urgency across many enterprises. Yet, almost half of the members (45%) of Gartner CIO Research Circle feel that their business has insufficient IT-business resources available to properly support CIO objectives being achieved. And 66% have to focus on running IT (keeping the lights on) and don’t have enough time to spend on revenue center initiatives. Hence, enterprise business leaders have many drivers for utilizing a service provider:
- They may already rely on the technology capabilities of a service provider and want to exploit the additional capabilities available.
- They may be looking for continuous innovation delivered by the service provider rather than just managing an infrastructure environment.
- They may know they have a digital business problem, and need advice on the best technology solution to deploy.
As organizations push more critical workloads to the digital touchpoint, they ask service providers to provide the necessary environments, and run, maintain and secure those workloads. Hybrid integration of enterprise IT environments with digital business infrastructure environments is imperative for any organization to excel in its overall digital strategies. But while manageability across hybrid platforms — for example, across on-premises, public cloud and edge — is an enormously complex task, building a consistent bridge from core to cloud to edge is an even bigger challenge.
However, looking beyond the edge, directly at the digital touchpoint and supporting customers’ business moments is another challenge for enterprises. Managing proximity to end consumers is imperative in a world of digital business services and IoT to close the gap between the digital and physical world. This is of growing importance, in particular, since 60% of organizations are currently using IoT, while another 38% of the organizations plan to deploy at least one use case of IoT by YE19. Through this digital bridge, organizations connect to their customers in ways that have not been experienced in a broad scope across multiple industries. Thus, any technology connection failure that does not allow connectivity with a customer will have a direct impact on the organization’s revenue stream. And as the realities of hybrid digital infrastructures kick in, the scale and complexity of managing them through hybrid digital infrastructure management (HDIM) is becoming a more pressing issue for IT leaders.
Managing Cost Centers vs. Managing Revenue Centers
On their journey to digitalization, enterprises are looking beyond digitizing the internal organization and toward the changing external industry landscape. With increasing frequency, enterprises now ask how to deal with specific changes in becoming a digital business. By finding their “techquilibrium”, 56% of enterprises are seeking operational excellence, while 46% of enterprises focus on increasing revenue through digital channels, including digital ecosystems.
Supporting a client’s and prospect’s individual techquilibrium journeys creates various growth opportunities and challenges for service providers. The future of service delivery is a balancing act between managing enterprise IT environments and digital business infrastructure for digital touchpoint environments. On one hand, service providers that are just reacting and managing the cost center provide a low business value to their clients of “keep the lights on.” On the other hand, this opens a large opportunity for service providers that are changing their habits and managing environments that provide a higher business value and are considered as a revenue center.
In our research note “Market Trends: The Future Operations of Infrastructure MSPs Will Require an Equilibrium of Enterprise IT and Digital Business”, we discuss key market trends that service providers must consider to support the changing customer requirements to win modern infrastructure deals, including operating in a hybrid mode to support enterprise IT and digital business.
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