The majority of senior IT leaders and decision-making managers of large global companies indicate their organisations have yet to fully embrace the aspects of IT transformation needed to remain competitive.
This is according to a Dell EMC study, conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), titled "ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve".
It found that 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, many organisations still measure application cycle times in months, if not years; they also have siloed infrastructures; and continue to grapple with rigid legacy architectures - all barriers to undertaking successful digital transformation.
The study was designed to understand the role IT transformation plays toward becoming a digital business. The research is based on global survey responses, from 1 000 participating organisations in various parts of the world, namely US, Brazil, the UK, Germany, France, China, Japan and Australia.
"Around 95% of survey respondents indicated their organisations 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," notes the study.
"Around 54% of respondents use converged or hyper-converged infrastructure to support applications, and 58% of respondents have adopted scale-out storage systems in some capacity. Roughly 50% of respondents said they are committed to software-defined as a long-term strategy and have begun to implement, evaluate or plan for software-defined technologies."
David Goulden, president of Dell EMC, says these findings mirror how the vast majority of customers need to optimise their existing infrastructures to take advantage of digital-age opportunities.
"The research shows 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 organisations progress in their IT transformation investments, they can overcome the conflict between legacy IT and digital business initiatives to realise their goals, speed time to market and increase competitiveness," explains Goulden.
Adam DeMattia, director of research, Enterprise Strategy Group, says: "Legacy IT is largely unprepared to meet the requirements of the new digital business: application cycle times measured in months, if not years; siloed infrastructure that prohibits organisations from viewing their data holistically; performance bottlenecks that impact end-user experience in a world that demands constant availability and response times; rigid architectures that force organisations to make forklift upgrades as requirements change; and traditional provisioning processes in which IT is often seen as a barrier rather than an enabler for the business. Organisations must resolve this conflict between digital transformation goals and today's IT reality if the business is to meet its ultimate objectives."
According to the "Global VMware State of the Digital Workspace Report", which surveyed 1 200 business and IT decision-makers, practitioners and influencers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), over half of EMEA businesses (51%) that have successfully executed digital workspace initiatives saw improvements in their ability to more rapidly bring new revenue streams online.
The study revealed 57% of organisations which had transformed their digital workspaces saw improvements to mobile workforce effectiveness, 54% in user satisfaction and 47% to security of devices, desktops and applications.
Meanwhile, Dimension Data's "Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report" found most organisations around the world are failing to implement effective digital strategies, and as a result, their customer experience solutions are becoming disjointed.
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