Nigel Page, HP's Chief Technologist & Strategist EG EMEA, said on the sidelines of the HP Reimagine 2015 summit in Johannesburg that the rise of mobility, social networking, big data and cloud computing, and the emergence of significant market disruptors, was forcing massive change in IT. "Now, we see a new style of business driven by the hybrid infrastructure, with accessibility and security key, and data and analytics at the core, rather than at the edge. The CIO must build systems as a service and cloud is no longer a resource but a capability," he said.
"Even the language of IT is evolving," said Page. "It was about performance, scale and cost. Now, the dialogue includes agility, opex and levels of integration."
While this tectonic shift demanded of IT to meet new business demands might seem daunting to the CIO, Page points out there are major benefits to the IT department that embraces the new style of IT. "Now, CIOs are getting back control of the environment. In recent years, we have seen IT plagued by shadow IT. IT can sprawl very easily, and there has been a proliferation of uncontrolled apps in enterprise. But in the new style of IT, with a next generation hybrid infrastructure, IT can take back control of this environment."
HP says the ideal infrastructure must be software-defined, modular, secure, open source, and managed by a common solution.
Recent HP research revealed that 88% of respondents from leading enterprises believe that changes and improvements to their IT infrastructure are needed to stay competitive. And 70% of these firms say that making such changes delivers an extremely significant impact.
IT can use its influence within the business to meet its goals, introducing not just technology, but also the processes and workflows that enable growth, improve profitability, increase agility, boost productivity, improve the customer experience, increase innovation and reduce risk, HP believes.
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