Path to Digital Transformation in IT Begins With Optimizing What’s There to Start

In our work with organizations of all shapes and sizes helping them realize the benefits of digital transformation, every year we survey IT leaders in the broader marketplace to get their thoughts on a wide variety of topics. As a leading Solutions Integrator, it only makes sense for us to keep our finger on the pulse of IT regarding the top issues our partners and clients face each day.

So, in commissioning Foundry to conduct the latest edition of our annual check on progress, “The Path to Digital Transformation,” we dive deep into what respondents see as the top enablers/inhibitors to digitization and IT initiatives and priorities in 2023. Thankfully, this specific path isn’t made up exclusively of twists and turns.

After all, it seems optimizing data and analytics capabilities rank as the biggest IT priority. It’s taken the top spot (51%) for the second year in a row. To shine a brighter light on the priority’s significance, 72% of respondents independently said their volume of data is growing faster than they can manage it, pointing to the need to address sprawl as another recurring theme.

On-premises vs. in the cloud

For additional context, optimizing data and analytics capabilities ranked just ahead of increasing cloud adoption (49%) on the list of biggest priorities. Of note though, one in five organizations are actually projected to repatriate cloud workloads to an on-premises model, but the need for access to data remains front and center.

There are two main reasons behind the repatriation, based on what we’ve been seeing at Insight: economics and physics. In a world where you’re gathering massive amounts of data — more on that sprawl — it doesn’t make sense to send it all to the cloud based on how expensive it is, but also due to the physics regarding latency (as one example).

Just think of an airport authority installing video cameras throughout the premises. The goal is obvious. You’re ensuring no one hops the fence to cross the runway or a suspicious suitcase gets left unattended. You need to go through all that footage though, even if just to make sure there’s nothing there. So, what do you do? You send all the footage to a centralized location. If the analysis reveals a few seconds of action that must be investigated further, you send it to somewhere more sophisticated.

So, then we start talking about whether things should be done locally or at the edge (which many believe is going to be the biggest cloud) versus what should go to through that second level of analysis, which would entail using a more expensive model. However, both those levels are needed to jointly, cost-effectively take advantage of advanced analytics.

Even so, the pendulum is undeniably seemingly swinging back the other way after the pandemic seemed to drive cloud consumption. “Cloud-first” strategies are losing steam due to higher costs. Instead it’s more about a “what-makes-sense” strategy. As an illustration, back in the 1980s, there was a shift to servers. In the midst of the mass migration, businesses got carried away and neglected to properly leverage Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS) to mitigate potential power failures and surges impacting mainframes. It’s the same sort of thing with each major transition. There’s a lot clients could be doing in terms of learning from past experiences about what applies in 2023 (and beyond).

Cybersecurity as critical as ever

Take cybersecurity as another example, with 51% of survey respondents reporting breaches in the last year. Traditionally, businesses don’t action it enough. Everyone has some degree of security in their environments, but few think things through until a breach occurs.

Back in 2014, I was going across Canada talking about digitization on an earlier stop in my career. Most people took that to mean “cloud” and thought it was unaffordable at the time because of all the security that they thought they would need. However, everyone soon got on board with the same idea, how even though they themselves may not have enough money for security, Microsoft and Amazon and Google will.

So, the pendulum just massively swung from “Nope, can’t go there because of security issues” to “It’s the only place to go because of security issues.” There are of course reasons to go to the cloud outside of security, but you need to be thinking about security all throughout the journey. Otherwise, you’re going to end up in a scenario where you think you’re in a safer environment than you are. Now, not all companies have moved to the cloud and others leverage hybrid-cloud models. Securing these environments and third-party applications are still as important as ever, as attackers are finding their way in more and more. A simple rule of thumb is, wherever we compute, security must be a top focus.

Think of car insurance. Many might see a government mandate as the only reason to pay your bill every month. If there were a mandate to have a certain level of security in order to be able to connect to consumers, it would almost change that world completely, but people are left to their own standards for risk. So, they literally see it as purely as a cost and not a benefit until the worst happens. Insurance is an expense until you get a $10,000 claim. Then the whole thing makes sense. The average security breach costs millions.

As cyberattacks continue to increase in number, we at Insight take our role, helping clients along their security journey to heart. It’s our job to help them select the right products and build a security program that aligns to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards — our goal to reduce technology sprawl in the process.

IT sprawl a fitting elephant in the room

That brings us to what (a leading 50% of) our respondents named their top IT initiative for 2023: Optimizing IT infrastructures through better monitoring and management. It’s easy to see as an acknowledgement on the part of respondents that they need to manage IT sprawl now, before it hits critical mass.

As a result of trends like shadow IT, there’s a lot of duplication out there. As a community, IT is not optimizing what we already have. We’re typically building new environments for each requirement. Companies are now recognizing they don’t have to do that. There are so many tools out there for virtualization and optimizing the use of technology. Really, this is what the cloud is built on, the realization you don’t need that server 24/7, but only for specific applications.

What the survey’s results ultimately show is that 2023 represents an inflection point for IT. The focus is no longer on specific use-case examples. Instead it’s on developing new technology or virtualizing solutions available right now in other application areas.

That’s where the twists and turns come in. Rest assured, Insight is right there every step of the way for our partners and clients, as we align our strategies this year to meet their needs head on.

Complete survey results are at solutions.insight.com/StateofInnovation.

Dan Kronstal is the principal architect of solutions for of Insight Enterprises Canada. He leads the technical delivery and go-to-market engagement for our Modern Apps, Data & AI, and Intelligent Edge practices for Insight Canada. These solution areas cover a diversity of capabilities from advanced network design to hybrid data center and cloud services to application modernization and immersive experience. Dan and his teams are passionate enthusiasts of emerging technology and creative problem solving and thrive on achieving technology-driven business value for clients spanning size and industry spectrums.