Changing Business, Changing IT, Changing Sources

Where, how, why, and from whom IT capabilities are sourced has changed forever. Unfortunately, too many businesses still manage their providers, services, and sources as they did through previous generations. Smart companies are rethinking how they source and manage IT, and even starting over, in order to reduce complexity, mitigate risk, and manage costs of increasingly hybridized cloud plus traditional IT environments.

“We’re starting at the beginning,” CIO of a Fortune 1000 investment bank, (Optimized Sourcing in Hybrid Environments by Saugatuck Technology). “First, we had to realize that most of what we know and believe about Cloud and the changing nature of IT and business is probably at least 12 months old, and therefore outdated and likely wrong,” he stated. “We work very hard to catch up and stay abreast [of these changes], but the scale and pace today are beyond almost everyone’s ability, except the providers. So we’re turning more and more to our services providers to help us manage and optimize things for our business. They already know how to deal with the scope and pace of change.”

“We are very rapidly evolving toward [integrative] sourcing for all of our business and IT services. Cloud-delivered IT and business services are a prime factor motivating this — we need to get a handle on this hybridized environment, soon — or it’s going to cost us,” said the CTO, $5B US-based aerospace systems manufacturer (Optimized Sourcing in Hybrid Environments by Saugatuck Technology).

Understanding hybrid IT and business realities

Most IT organizations have substantial experience in evaluating and acquiring servers, storage, networks, software packages, data integration tools, and professional services contracts. Today’s services-enabled solutions may consist of all of these components, acquired or used as integrated solutions that span and blend varying sets of intra– and inter-group functionality and responsibility.

How can traditional IT or finance organizations effectively evaluate these offerings, usage, and related costs? And how can they take advantage of coordinating all such services into a cohesive working environment? Just as importantly: how can the organizations responsible identify, evaluate, select, and manage the best-suited providers?

Enterprise finance and IT organizations are attempting to adapt, but it is a laborious process that frustrates users that want things to work at “Cloud speed,” or the accelerating pace of technology use, dispersion and innovation.

As the head of one large enterprise IT organization recently explained, “We evaluate every acquisition with a strategic view, but it takes time – sometimes as long as 18 months.” This raises the specter of frustration with corporate IT procurement, a prime factor driving early Cloud adoption outside of established sourcing structures. This led to widespread development of “shadow” IT that further complicated IT and business finance planning, forecasting and budgeting, due in no small part to the costs of corralling and managing such an unplanned, jumbled mix of assets and contracts.

Business environments globally have become more complex, “hybrid” infratructures that increasingly include multiple types of solutions and services from multiple types of providers – including services that bridge multiple Cloud-based and on-premises technologies, systems, and operations. Properly managed, such environments can optimize IT use and enable significant business advantage. But the reality is that few such environments are optimally managed in-house, wasting millions and enabling significant security risks.

Utilizing managed services

Multi-vendor, multi-technology hybrid-style environments have existed for decades. But widely-available, useful, and initially inexpensive Cloud-based resources have catalyzed a virtual explosion of solutions and sources for all manner of IT and business needs, to the point where Cloud-based sources are increasingly preferred for most business IT.

The greatest influencing factor today is cloud-based IT, from infrastructure through platforms and software up to and including business processes, all sourced and delivered as services. The relative affordability, scalability and reach of Cloud- based services have catalyzed simultaneous growth and diversity with Mobile, Social, and Collaborative IT within and between organizations and markets.

The rapidly-increasing adoption and use of all of these has changed how, why, where, when, and from whom companies acquire technology and services. Enterprises today are interested in more strategic approaches for transforming their businesses. A critical element of this approach involves the use of managed services, which buyers indicate can provide them with capabilities to ensure the level of agility needed to adapt to market dynamics and the ability to optimize productivity and performance.

Ultimately, buyers need access to a full range of delivery options, including both traditional IT and cloud, that can help enterprises optimize their hybrid IT capabilities and transform their businesses. Managed Services can help them do just that.

Schedule a consultation today to learn more about managed services offered by Flagship Solutions Group.

View our infographic: DIY vs MSP

If you liked this blog, you might also like:  Simplifying Hybrid IT with Managed Services

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