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IT infrastructure weaknesses concern CIOs

Regina Pazvakavambwa
By Regina Pazvakavambwa, ITWeb portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 11 Apr 2016
Building an IT department that is as integrated and converged as the company's infrastructure will require a deep cultural change, says EMC.
Building an IT department that is as integrated and converged as the company's infrastructure will require a deep cultural change, says EMC.

Many CIOs doubt the ability of their current IT infrastructure and skills of their IT professionals to meet the long-term needs as technology becomes embedded across the business.

This is according to a recent survey by EMC, which says 69% of CIOs are concerned future business growth could reveal weaknesses in traditional IT operations and infrastructure.

The study comprised over 2 700 business and IT professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), including SA.

Every business is now a technology business and they cannot operate without it, says Chris Norton, director enterprise sales at VCE. However, it seems that the more technology is embedded, the more traditional IT becomes marginalised, he adds.

Organisations need technology that is fully integrated into their business and can scale, adapt and respond faster than ever before, says Norton. As a result, CIOs are under pressure to prepare IT for the future, and retain control of IT, says the report.

The findings indicate that three-quarters of CIOs believe that five years from now they will need to be able to launch new products, services and applications in half the time it takes them today.

Forty one percent say extracting value from ever-greater volumes of data is the top IT challenge facing the business, with 37% expecting this to still be the top challenge in 2019, the study says.

It notes the need to accommodate business unpredictability and the associated demands for rapid scaling is another challenge for business in 2016.

By 2019 this is expected to be replaced by the challenge - and opportunity - of enabling real-time business operations, says the report.

It revealed four in ten CIOs say the top IT challenge for the next three years is extracting value from ever-greater volumes of data, followed by the challenges of business unpredictability and enabling real-time business needs.

Eighty percent believe a scalable, flexible converged infrastructure will provide the platform for growth, adds EMC.

Nigel Moulton, EMEA CTO at VCE, the converged platforms division of EMC, says to reclaim full control, CIOs and their IT teams need to stop spending so much time building and managing different infrastructure components.

Instead they need to transform IT into an efficient business-focused engine that can scale rapidly in response to changing business needs. This demands a modern data centre.

One way of achieving is by implementing a robust, software-defined, converged infrastructure. Convergence can power more agile development and increased speed to market, addressing directly some of the top IT challenges identified, he notes.

Barry Cashman, vice president, EMEA, VCE, the Converged Platform Division of EMC, says a powerful infrastructure will deliver the high performance, scalability and agility the business needs.

"Too much effort is still spent simply keeping the operational lights on, when the business needs to focus on developing and releasing new, value-added products and services. IT needs to be free to focus on meeting business goals. A converged infrastructure will enable it to do so."

There has been a definitive shift from a network-centric approach to an application and service-centric approach, says George Kalebaila, senior research manager at IDC Sub-Saharan Africa.

The IT department in an organisation exists to give a service, not to be a bottleneck, he adds. The applications that an organisation needs to run to fulfil their business needs should dictate the network environment, not the other way around, he says.

Building an IT department that is as integrated and converged as the company's infrastructure will require a deep cultural change, says EMC. IT needs to learn the language of business just as the rest of the business needs to learn the language of technology, it adds.

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