I’m not always 100 percent impressed with research houses and some analysts. But a white paper from Nemertes Research titled “Shift to ‘Enterprise Technology’ Relies Upon Vendor Partners for Managed, Cloud Services” has me plum jealous, wishing I wrote it. It is pretty darn good work by Robin Gareiss, founder and executive vice president of Nemertes.
The basic idea is that enterprises are moving from an Information Technology (IT) to Enterprise Technology (ET) focus. So what does changing one word mean? Plenty, according to Gareiss.
“Not only does this shift change the way business leaders view IT, it also alters the organizational structure of IT itself,” Gareiss said. “In the ET world, the technology team becomes more strategic, and as a result, it relies more heavily on trusted partners to handle tactical functions—and in some cases, assist in strategic direction of the company.”
This is great news for partners, particularly those with managed services and the expertise to go along with them. “Managed and cloud services are playing an increasingly important role in enterprise organizations, with the network itself serving as the foundation for effective and strategic ET policy. IT leaders must define a new operating model that allows for innovation and adapts to the changes in the business climate and in the demand for services.”
As businesses require IT departments to do more, including being a strategic partner, IT can’t do it all. “ET requires a transformation in how the internal staff thinks, reacts and creates, along with a stronger reliance on technology partners through managed and cloud services,” Gareiss believes.
The paper was written, in part, based on interviewing 228 IT pros, of whom 79 percent said they are using “non traditional ways,” and with 72 percent expecting to increase the use of these ways in the future.
“Leaders are putting processes in place to determine what services to outsource, how to do it, and when to rely upon their technology partners,” Gareiss added.
The technology leaders essentially become “trusted advisors” to the business units, advising on how technology can solve problems or create opportunities. At the same time, vendor partners become “trusted advisors” to both business and technology providing technology and competitive context, advising on strategy developments, helping to uncover new, relevant technologies, and assisting with pilots, deployment and operations.
One challenge IT leaders cite is simply not having enough people to shift from tactical to strategic. By leveraging relationships with vendor partners, IT organizations can turn that ship.
First, they must identify the nonstrategic “keep the lights on” IT functions. Then, they must determine which functions they will turn over to a trusted partner. Ideally, the cost to outsource will be lower, by taking advantage of economies of scale. And the result will be a higher headcount IT leaders can devote to strategic, rather than tactical functions.
Already, 75 percent of companies use some form of managed, hosted or cloud services.
Typical services they outsource include network/router, desktop support, IP telephony, UC, data centers and Mobile Device Management (MDM).
Offloading such services to third parties is imperative in addressing the new strategic requirements business leaders demand.
IT professionals are wise to envision and select cloud providers that are more like “trusted advisors” than “commodity suppliers.” In the IT space, trusted advisors tend to be large telecoms, systems vendors and software providers.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
