Skip to main content

Focus on Innovation or Miss Market Opportunities

IT operations staff are spending over 30% of their time on new service requests and supporting issue resolution, while only 15% of their time is allocated to innovation, according to Optimization Drives Digital Transformation, a new report conducted by IDC and published by Dimension Data reveals.

This represents a 25% year on year decline — just as the demand to capitalize on improving customer engagement, adopting the Internet of Things (IoT), and leveraging the use of big data and data analytics is making IT innovation a non-negotiable within organizations.

The message is clear: enterprises that don’t evolve their IT business models could miss future market opportunities.

Over the past decade, technology has delivered consistent efficiencies: from saving costs to redeploying labor, contributing to leaner operations, and meeting shareholder expectations. However, with the rise of the digital era, efficiency on its own is no longer sufficient. IT operations must support the execution of new digital business initiatives, and deliver a consistently high-availability IT infrastructure that meets end-user demand. This requires sustainable IT optimization that delivers better service level agreements (SLAs), greater efficiencies, and higher performing infrastructure while minimizing downtime risks. But freeing up resources for innovation remains a challenge.

While organizations know they must evolve their IT operations to be more strategic and less tactical, most in-house IT and development teams are still struggling to keep up. In fact, most companies that participated in the report said they still monitor and tune their IT in a disjointed manner, with only 14% reporting that their infrastructure is positioned for digitization.

According to the report, only 20% of organizations claim they’ve fully automated and optimized their infrastructure, while the majority are on a path to automation, but haven’t reached their goal.

■ 9% of organizations have no automation

■ 13% have limited automation

■ 32% have a medium level of automation and orchestration

■ 25% are highly automated

Barney Taylor, Dimension Data's Managing Director UK & Ireland, says some of the reasons why IT organizations are lagging behind can be attributed to budget, experience, and expertise. “Successful digital transformation requires the right mix of people, processes, and tools. However, IT service automation platforms are expensive and time consuming to develop and successfully integrate into hybrid IT environments.”

Methodology: IDC surveyed IT and senior managers in 10 countries at 275 enterprises that employ over 1,000 people each. Of those 275 organisations surveyed, two-thirds stated that considered IT operations to be "core" to their business.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

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 ...

Focus on Innovation or Miss Market Opportunities

IT operations staff are spending over 30% of their time on new service requests and supporting issue resolution, while only 15% of their time is allocated to innovation, according to Optimization Drives Digital Transformation, a new report conducted by IDC and published by Dimension Data reveals.

This represents a 25% year on year decline — just as the demand to capitalize on improving customer engagement, adopting the Internet of Things (IoT), and leveraging the use of big data and data analytics is making IT innovation a non-negotiable within organizations.

The message is clear: enterprises that don’t evolve their IT business models could miss future market opportunities.

Over the past decade, technology has delivered consistent efficiencies: from saving costs to redeploying labor, contributing to leaner operations, and meeting shareholder expectations. However, with the rise of the digital era, efficiency on its own is no longer sufficient. IT operations must support the execution of new digital business initiatives, and deliver a consistently high-availability IT infrastructure that meets end-user demand. This requires sustainable IT optimization that delivers better service level agreements (SLAs), greater efficiencies, and higher performing infrastructure while minimizing downtime risks. But freeing up resources for innovation remains a challenge.

While organizations know they must evolve their IT operations to be more strategic and less tactical, most in-house IT and development teams are still struggling to keep up. In fact, most companies that participated in the report said they still monitor and tune their IT in a disjointed manner, with only 14% reporting that their infrastructure is positioned for digitization.

According to the report, only 20% of organizations claim they’ve fully automated and optimized their infrastructure, while the majority are on a path to automation, but haven’t reached their goal.

■ 9% of organizations have no automation

■ 13% have limited automation

■ 32% have a medium level of automation and orchestration

■ 25% are highly automated

Barney Taylor, Dimension Data's Managing Director UK & Ireland, says some of the reasons why IT organizations are lagging behind can be attributed to budget, experience, and expertise. “Successful digital transformation requires the right mix of people, processes, and tools. However, IT service automation platforms are expensive and time consuming to develop and successfully integrate into hybrid IT environments.”

Methodology: IDC surveyed IT and senior managers in 10 countries at 275 enterprises that employ over 1,000 people each. Of those 275 organisations surveyed, two-thirds stated that considered IT operations to be "core" to their business.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

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 ...