IT Leaders Grapple with Optimization, Funding Challenges, & On- & Off-Premises Platform Decisions: IDG Survey
November 14 2017 - 7:30AM
Nearly all IT executive survey respondents report that IT is
crucial or very important to their business strategy, according to
a new IDG Research Services survey commissioned by Datalink, a
division of Insight Enterprises (Nasdaq:NSIT). However, a number of
hurdles are hindering progress to meet the needs of the business.
IT leaders report difficulties in freeing up funds to invest in IT
innovations to advance the business. In addition, while IT
optimization levels show some year-over-year improvement, work
continues on the journey to transform technology, skills, and
processes to meet business needs. Lastly, while respondents report
leveraging a hybrid cloud strategy, assessing which workloads are
best suited for on- and/or off-premises cloud platforms is
challenging due to difficulties in determining security, data
storage, and data access requirements, as well as defining a
multi-site strategy.
The survey—Stakes Rise for IT: The IT Transformation
Journey—polled senior IT leaders (70% were VP or C-Level
IT executives; 30% were directors) from large enterprises regarding
business and IT strategies, IT optimization opportunities and
challenges, as well as cloud-related strategy and execution
considerations.
Key findings:
- 98% said IT is crucial or very important to business
strategy. Efficiency, customer service,
agility, and digital transformation are the top four business
strategies IT will focus on in the next 12 months.
- Approximately 25% (up from nearly 10% in 2016) rate
their IT environments as fully optimized in areas ranging
from application workload management to process standardization and
team staffing models. Thirty percent (down from nearly 50% in 2016)
of respondents rank their optimization level between 1 and 6 on a
scale of 1 to 10, indicating room for improvement.
- More than 50% said funding IT innovation is extremely
challenging. Two-thirds of the IT budget is spent on
“keeping the lights on” vs. innovation and business-advancing
initiatives. This allocation is expected to shift
over the next two years in favor of innovation/business advancing
investments.
Respondents report leveraging a hybrid cloud model, but faced
some challenges:
- The balance of workloads currently on public and
private cloud platforms is relatively even today and will
not shift much over the next two years.
- More than 50% who have deployed workloads to public
cloud have brought one or more back in-house. This
represents a 14% increase over those reported in 2016. The top four
reasons for moving workloads back in-house were: level of control
over resources or data, compliance, reliability / performance, and
security.
- 75% are more cautious versus one year
ago when making the decision to move particular applications or
workloads to public cloud. Security continues to be a
primary concern before deploying workloads in a public cloud
platform.
- Respondents plan to leverage a third-party to some
degree to assist with determining compliance requirements,
assessing scalability requirements, and performing application
interdependency analysis.
“The stakes have never been higher for IT leaders to transform
IT to advance the business,” said Shawn O’Grady, Senior VP and
General Manager, Datalink. “This survey illustrates that IT
optimization is not a quick fix. Transformations such as these span
processes, skills, and technology and take time to successfully
assess and execute. Business and IT executives need to be in
lockstep to ensure IT helps advance the business.”
The complete survey is available at
www.datalink.com/TransformIT.
MethodologyThe survey received 142 complete
qualified respondents and was fielded online in the U.S. from
September 15, 2017 through September 25, 2017. Respondents were
required to work in an IT-related function at the Director level or
above. Qualified respondents are employed at companies with an
average of 23,000 employees.
About DatalinkDatalink, a division of Insight,
is a complete IT services and solutions provider that helps
companies transform their technology, operations and service
delivery to meet business challenges. Combining extensive
experience, a full lifecycle of services and a comprehensive
approach to producing IT innovations that empower positive business
outcomes, Datalink delivers success across cloud IT transformation,
next generation technology, and security. Parent company Insight
Enterprises (Nasdaq:NSIT) is a Fortune 500-ranked global provider
of hardware, software, cloud and service solutions. For more
information, call 800.448.6314 or visit datalink.com.
Contacts:Cheryl ScholzDatalinkTel. (952)
279-4829Email: CHERYL.SCHOLZ@INSIGHT.COM
Robyn ItuleInsight EnterprisesTel. (480)
333-3544Email: ROBYN.ITULE@INSIGHT.COM
Ariel KouvarasSloane & CompanyTel. (212)
446-1884Email: AKOUVARAS@SLOANEPR.COM
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