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Digital Transformation and IT Transformation: The Questions Behind the Conundrum

Dennis Drogseth

EMA has just completed some new research on "Digital" and "IT Transformation." Our goal was to discover what the truth really is surrounding these critical (and sometimes overused) terms. In order to optimize the depth and value of this unique research, for the first time ever EMA partnered with the IT Transformation Institute.

We will be delivering a webinar sharing some of the highlights of this research on September 30.

We embedded a simple definition within our questionnaire, just to make sure our respondents were on the same "proverbial" page. So we defined "digital transformation" as directed at optimizing business or organizational effectiveness via digital and IT services. And "IT transformation" as an initiative focused on optimizing IT performance for business or organizational needs and outcomes. While the two terms do seem like hand-and-glove fits (and should be), the recent buzz around digital transformation has set it apart in the minds of many.

We looked globally across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific (APAC) with more than 300 respondents, about 30% of whom were business leaders and the rest largely came from the IT executive community. We wanted to investigate how digital and IT transformation complemented each other (or didn't), how business leaders and IT leaders viewed this critical arena — where were the views similar and where did they differ? And we wanted to investigate geographic differences, as well.

In turn, we wanted to project this "transformational heat map" on what we believed to be a number of transformational prerequisites. These included:

■ Organization and politics: Who's leading the charge in digital transformation? In IT transformation? We asked both in terms of role and organizational association, and in terms of both drivers and ongoing oversight.

■ Technologies: Were technology investments drivers, supporting players, or non-central to transformation? We examined this question in detail from operations to ITSM; from analytics to automation to service mapping; from customer experience, to security, to financial and IT governance; from revenue generation and brand awareness to business process impacts.

■ Metrics: How did both IT and digital transformation efforts measure success? What were the predominant preferred metrics in terms of operational performance, financial optimization and business outcomes?

■ Cloud and DevOps: How are these ground-shaping foundations of the digital age affecting digital and IT transformation? How and where are they integrated into transformational efforts?

■ Processes and Best Practices: To what degree do industry best practices apply to transformational efforts? And what are the preferred best practices for digital transformation in particular?

■ Transformational Partners: Where are transformational leaders seeking to partner and how successful are those partnerships, whether from IT management software vendors, systems integrators, business consultants, or transformational specialists?

■ Success Factors: What is the magic formula (in terms of all of the above and more) for transformational success? Is it the same for IT and for digital transformation? And how do business stakeholders and IT stakeholders view success rates, obstacles, and priorities for going forward?

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Digital Transformation and IT Transformation: The Questions Behind the Conundrum

Dennis Drogseth

EMA has just completed some new research on "Digital" and "IT Transformation." Our goal was to discover what the truth really is surrounding these critical (and sometimes overused) terms. In order to optimize the depth and value of this unique research, for the first time ever EMA partnered with the IT Transformation Institute.

We will be delivering a webinar sharing some of the highlights of this research on September 30.

We embedded a simple definition within our questionnaire, just to make sure our respondents were on the same "proverbial" page. So we defined "digital transformation" as directed at optimizing business or organizational effectiveness via digital and IT services. And "IT transformation" as an initiative focused on optimizing IT performance for business or organizational needs and outcomes. While the two terms do seem like hand-and-glove fits (and should be), the recent buzz around digital transformation has set it apart in the minds of many.

We looked globally across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific (APAC) with more than 300 respondents, about 30% of whom were business leaders and the rest largely came from the IT executive community. We wanted to investigate how digital and IT transformation complemented each other (or didn't), how business leaders and IT leaders viewed this critical arena — where were the views similar and where did they differ? And we wanted to investigate geographic differences, as well.

In turn, we wanted to project this "transformational heat map" on what we believed to be a number of transformational prerequisites. These included:

■ Organization and politics: Who's leading the charge in digital transformation? In IT transformation? We asked both in terms of role and organizational association, and in terms of both drivers and ongoing oversight.

■ Technologies: Were technology investments drivers, supporting players, or non-central to transformation? We examined this question in detail from operations to ITSM; from analytics to automation to service mapping; from customer experience, to security, to financial and IT governance; from revenue generation and brand awareness to business process impacts.

■ Metrics: How did both IT and digital transformation efforts measure success? What were the predominant preferred metrics in terms of operational performance, financial optimization and business outcomes?

■ Cloud and DevOps: How are these ground-shaping foundations of the digital age affecting digital and IT transformation? How and where are they integrated into transformational efforts?

■ Processes and Best Practices: To what degree do industry best practices apply to transformational efforts? And what are the preferred best practices for digital transformation in particular?

■ Transformational Partners: Where are transformational leaders seeking to partner and how successful are those partnerships, whether from IT management software vendors, systems integrators, business consultants, or transformational specialists?

■ Success Factors: What is the magic formula (in terms of all of the above and more) for transformational success? Is it the same for IT and for digital transformation? And how do business stakeholders and IT stakeholders view success rates, obstacles, and priorities for going forward?

The Latest

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

More than half (51%) of companies are already leveraging AI agents, according to the PagerDuty Agentic AI Survey. Agentic AI adoption is poised to accelerate faster than generative AI (GenAI) while reshaping automation and decision-making across industries ...

Image
Pagerduty

 

Real privacy protection thanks to technology and processes is often portrayed as too hard and too costly to implement. So the most common strategy is to do as little as possible just to conform to formal requirements of current and incoming regulations. This is a missed opportunity ...

The expanding use of AI is driving enterprise interest in data operations (DataOps) to orchestrate data integration and processing and improve data quality and validity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) ...