The current rate of change in the technology space is arguably unprecedented. We live in a new world order where consumer and business technologies are driving advancements faster than we can process. This has resulted in a level of intricacy and difficulty that corporate IT organizations have never before experienced. And in a climate where – now more than ever – speed wins, simplifying the complexities associated with IT, big data and cloud computing has become essential to survival and success.
This summer, Oracle and IDC conducted a study around this subject and concluded that reducing IT complexity leads to better business outcomes. In the study, IDC defined IT complexity as the state of an IT infrastructure that leads to wasted effort, time or expense. This could be caused by many factors, including use of previous generation or legacy technologies, server application “sprawl,” lack of sufficient management tools and automation, and non-centralized IT “pockets” scattered around different portions of the broader organization, among others.
The study found that regardless of the cause, IT complexity caused challenges for both IT and the business as a whole, including reduced time to market, decreased ability to support innovation, missed opportunities and competitive disadvantage, operational cost and management overhead, inefficient vendor management, increased software licensing costs and more.
I know firsthand that this issue is a real and significant pain point for enterprises both large and small. I speak with IT executives and CIOs every day about how to create a successful strategy that takes their legacy infrastructure into account, balancing it with demands for new business applications and how to best leverage the cloud to run their business. In fact, recently, when I spoke with a client about evolving his organization’s cloud strategy, he cited his three most pressing challenges as: 1) delivering efficiency and agility by leveraging hybrid cloud deployments 2) understanding the application requirements to support long- and short-term efficiencies and 3) developing a cost matrix to enable the shift. He pointed to his partnership with Red8 as being critical to his success in addressing these challenges because our model streamlines the inherent complexities.
As the IDC study points out, there is no single cure for the complexity syndrome that is part of doing business in today’s world, however there are steps that can be taken to move in the right direction.
At Red8, we feel that the best way to streamline IT is to work with a trusted partner to guide, support and enable your business. A partner that will listen to your challenges and needs and then create a customized solution that provides success for both you and your customers.
No two cases are exactly alike, but at Red8, we thrive on collaboration and believe that all members of the IT community can learn from one another. So let’s get a conversation started. What are your experiences managing IT complexity?
Why Reducing IT Complexity Leads to Better Business Outcomes
