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IT decentralisation hits SA businesses

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 16 Feb 2017
Ian Jansen van Rensburg, senior systems engineering manager at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa.
Ian Jansen van Rensburg, senior systems engineering manager at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa.

IT is becoming more decentralised among the majority of South African organisations as businesses look outside the IT department for the next wave of technology disruption.

This was one of the major takeaways from a survey conducted by cloud infrastructure and business mobility solutions provider, VMware, in partnership with specialist market research firm, Vanson Bourn.

The study involved 2 000 IT decision-makers and 2 000 heads of lines of business globally, including 100 from SA.

According to the survey, 57% of South African business leaders are seeing technology management moving away from IT.

Presenting the survey findings in Johannesburg yesterday, Ian Jansen van Rensburg, senior systems engineering manager at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa, said the South African trend is not that much different from other geographies like the US and Europe.

"The decentralisation of IT is when any employee within any business department of an organisation, other than the IT department, is making IT purchases or installing or maintaining software. It can also include employees using non-IT-approved software, such as Dropbox, without the involvement of the centralised IT department," Jansen van Rensburg said.

He believes if the trend continues, the traditional IT department may soon become obsolete rather than being a broker of services.

Jansen van Rensburg added that once-specialised technology applications are becoming more accessible to non-specialists. This has resulted in IT departments becoming increasingly stretched and unable to meet the rising demands of business users.

VMware notes these factors are causing business users to take IT matters into their own hands - which may benefit them but also often disperses decision-making, fragments standards and duplicates IT assets. This creates a complexity that is harming operations - increasing costs, challenging collaboration and increasing vulnerability to cyber attacks.

Nonetheless, the company notes IT decentralisation is delivering real business benefits, such as the ability to launch new products and services to market with greater speed (61%); giving business freedom to drive innovations (59%); and increasing responsiveness to market conditions (59%).

It adds there are also positives from a skills perspective with the shift from technology ownership beyond IT to the broader business seen to increase employment satisfaction (63%) and help to attract better talent (52%).

However, VMware notes this move is not without challenges. In SA, leaders from across the business believe the shift is causing a duplication of spend on IT services (51%), a lack of clear ownership and responsibility for IT (58%) and the purchasing of insecure solutions (68%).

Furthermore, this decentralisation movement is happening against the wishes of the IT team, the majority of which (58%) want IT to become more centralised. In particular, IT leaders feel core functions like network security and compliance (50%), private cloud-based services (28%) and storage (24%) should remain in their control.

"It's 'transform or die' for many businesses, with a tumultuous economic environment and a radically evolved competitive landscape upturning the way they operate," says Matthew Kibby, regional director at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa. "Managing this change is the great organisational challenge companies face."

The ownership for driving innovation within South African organisations is not disputed among business leaders. The majority (80%) believe IT should enable the lines of business to drive innovation, but must set the strategic direction and be accountable for security. This highlights the balance to be struck between the central IT function retaining control while also allowing innovation to foster in other, separate areas of the business.

"This isn't 'shadow IT' anymore, that's yesterday's story - this is now 'mainstream IT'," continues Kibby. "The decentralisation movement is happening, driven by the need for speed in today's business world."

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