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.
This represents a 25% year on year decline – just as the demand to capitalise 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 organisations.
According to a new report from Dimension Data that looks at how optimisation of IT operations drives digital transformation, the message is clear: enterprises that don’t evolve their IT business models could miss future market opportunities.
Alan Turnley-Jones, executive for services at Dimension Data Middle East & Africa, says the report highlights that automation is essential to optimising IT operations.
“Savvy IT organisations understand that if they don’t focus on efficiencies today could miss the greater market opportunities of the future,” he says.
Over the past decade, technology has delivered consistent efficiencies: from saving costs to redeploying labour, 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 optimisation that delivers better service level agreements (SLAs), greater efficiencies, and higher performing infrastructure while minimising downtime risks. But freeing up resources for innovation remains a challenge.
While organisations 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 to for digitisation.
According to the report, only 20% of organisations claim they’ve fully automated and optimised their infrastructure, while the majority are on a path to automation, but haven’t reached their goal.
* 9% of organisations have no automation;
* 13% have limited automation;
* 32% have a medium level of automation and orchestration; and
* 25% are highly automated.
Turnley-Jones says some of the reasons why IT organisations are lagging 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.”
