Kathy Gibson at the IDC CIO Summit, Sandton – The new world of the digital organisation presents a wealth of new challenges for IT.
Jyoti Lalchandani, group vice-president and regional MD: Middle East, Africa and Turkey at IDC, says a real shift is happening and it’s making life difficult for the CIO.
In South Africa, there are a number of specific challenges: providing access to an increasingly mobile workforce; maintaining security; integration of disparate systems; ensuring availability of systems and apps; and ensuring IT performance.
Along with this, says Lalchandani, CIO priorities have seen a massive change: how do I drive innovation through IT; how do I manage IT governance, risk and compliance; how do I manage growing expectations and service needs of users; how do I obtain budgets for IT investment; and how do I align IT and business needs?
There are new sets of technologies and topics that are set to accelerate the pace of transformation in the 3rd platform. These include the Internet of Things, 3D printing, wearables, cognitive systems, pervasive robots and natural interfaces.
“So there is not just the impact of the four pillars of transformation, but also the digital accelerators,” Lalchandani says.
Tom O’Reilly, chief technology officer: MEA of VCE, explains that it’s imperative for CIOs to understand how to integrate technology into their organisations – and there is a host of new technologies that are creating opportunities.
“I call all these things robots,” O’Reilly says. ‘They are applications that have intelligence and will help the business make decisions that will differentiate itself from its competition.”
Examples include database technologies that can identify cancers in the medial world; or seismic data in the oil and gas field.
O’Reilly points out that intelligent apps could “sneak into” organisations. “As CIOs we need to know what’s going on in the market and make sure technology doesn’t get sneaked in the back door; but that we walk it in the front door.”
By 2018, these apps will have caused there to be 50% fewer process workers. At the same time, there will be 500% more digital business jobs. And there will be a 30% lower TCO in the running of the business.
But the problem, O’Reilly says, is that IT organisations still spend more than 60% of their budgets simply to keep the lights on. This leaves just over 30% for them to use for innovation and growth.
“We have to make a drastic change to the way we are operating,” he says. “Most companies are very comfortable sitting in the 2nd platform. And moving to 3rd platform is a big jump.”
VCE and EMC have introduced what they call 2.5 platform, which give organisations an easy step towards the 3rd platform.
“Hybrid cloud is key to the migration, O’Reilly says, but it’s more than just the infrastructure. “We are moving from the era of traditional applications to next-generation cloud apps,” he says.
“The infrastructure has to transform as well. A converged infrastructure can give companies the platform to do their change on.” Organisational transformation is key.
One of the biggest factors driving change is the explosion of data within organisations, O’Reilly says. “Our customer base is also exploding. And the number of customers IT looks after is also exploding.”
But systems need to interpret data in realtime and help the business., he adds. “IT has the opportunity to not only help the business but to drive the business,” he says.
Defining requirements upfront is important, says Vaughn Naidoo, executive: IT solutions, architecture and strategy at Telkom, particularly when it comes to big data or advanced analytics projects.
“Where we’ve had successful engagement, it’s been where we know what we need from the start. You need to have the right drivers and understand what you want to get out of the data.”