Increasing digitisation enables IT managers to make the transition from investment to operations; even better, it allows them to “resell” this model to their own internal clients.
All functions within companies are changing quickly due to information technology: internal processes, supplier integration, broader business ecosystems, client relationships, new services, and new business models.
These transformations generate increasing demand for IT resources, which in turn must adjust to the pace of business. Flexibility and quick response are the main expectations of managers and users, who are increasingly central to the development of IT strategies and are targeted by “booming supply,” including the cloud and business-as-a-service models.
Goodbye “capex” and hello “opex”
What can be more flexible than these solutions that require no further investment and are billed on a per-use basis? Thanks to automation technology and virtualisation, all resources may be “software-defined” and deliver greater agility, thereby allowing managers to adjust resources to consumer needs in real time. This marks the end of “capex” (capital expenditures) and the beginning of “opex” (operational expenditures), where costs reflect the level of activity.
Are we now living in an era where all users or company departments can define the solutions they need in just a few clicks and, thereby, configure the appropriate resources? Well, we’re nearly there, as Olaf Niemeitz, Sales Director at Axians in Germany suggests: “The IT manager at one of our clients did not want to use cloud solutions, but by conducting an audit of this company, we found no fewer than 1,500 cloud services. So, without a clear offer from the IT manager, users go into self-service mode, which leads to the development of shadow IT services.”
Transforming the IT department into a service centre
Behind this apparent ease in obtaining services lurk major issues for companies including controlling costs, providing coherent solutions, and ensuring cybersecurity. IT managers play a central role in enabling companies to make the most of the cloud and business-as-a-service offers.
Most IT managers choose to transform their IT infrastructure into a service centre. By developing private cloud functionalities, they can put forward flexible solutions provided as a service to their internal clients. They can also find the best hybridisation solutions with public cloud services, depending on the applications and varying capacity needs.
Providing coherent, secure, and cost-effective information and communication technology (ICT) solutions as a service is how IT managers are speeding up their companies’ digital transformation.
12/10/2016
