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.
