Kathy Gibson is at a Dell Technologies webinar – The cloud makes it possible for all companies to provide world-class IT infrastructure to their users.
“But there are different types of disruption going on,” says Nigel Moulton, global chief technology officer: modern datacentre business unit at Dell Technologies. “Organisations need to think about how they can defend against threats, and how they can seize market opportunities.”
He points out that author Geoffrey Moore writes that there are three types of disruption: infrastructure disruption; operational disruption; and business model disruption.
Infrastructure disruption could be seen where a digital player makes it easier for a user to do business by aggregating services from a variety of organisations. These service providers have to adapt their infrastructures to work with the aggregator in order to reach the customer. “Nine times out of 10, this would involve a software response.”
Food delivery is another example of infrastructure disruption: again where an aggregator “owns” the customer and to a large extent the delivery of the service.
In terms of operational disruption, airlines are a good example of how a higher level of service is offered to high-value passengers to ensure they have a better experience.
Often infrastructure or operational disruption doesn’t change the underlying business model.
But some industries have been severely disrupted by technology – although Mouton points out that these are typically much fewer than those disrupted at infrastructure or operational levels.
Typically, CIOs are looking to optimise costs and processes.
However, they need to consider way to innovate as well, and should aim to do this in conjunction with optimisation and commoditising applications.
The cloud comes into play here, Moulton says.
Being able to provide consistence the approach to infrastructure is enabled by the hybrid cloud , he adds.
Dell provides hybrid cloud infrastructure, and partners with VMware on the operations layer.
Value-added services add security, services consulting, cloud-enabled infrastructure and consumption models.