There is a direct and significant correlation between flexible IT delivery and business success. Companies that are further along the curve in deploying flexible IT are experiencing tangible benefits in areas such as cost savings, speed to market, risk reduction and business transformation.
These are among the findings of a recent survey of 2,000 IT decision-makers by Enterprise Strategy Group, detailed in a report titled Flexible IT Models Drive Efficiency and Innovation.
ESG evaluated each respondent’s organization based on how advanced it is in using flexible IT models. These models are cloud-centered, consumption-based and capable of delivering as-a-service IT that is faster, more agile, less complex and more responsive to the needs of the organization.
Overall, companies that are ahead of the curve in adopting flexible IT are seeing tangible rewards, including:
- Higher levels of innovation to drive business transformation: On average, 21% more of their annual revenue is driven by newly developed offerings.
- Differentiated customer experiences and higher customer satisfaction: They are 2.8 times more likely to exceed customer satisfaction goals.
- Recognition of IT as a competitive differentiator: They are 2.8 times more likely to see IT as a competitive differentiator and far less likely to view IT as a cost center or business inhibitor.
- Ability to adapt and thrive through uncertainty: 98% of respondents with flexible IT are confident they have the technology experience at their organization to adapt and thrive through major societal and macroeconomic disruptions.
Digging deeper into just how flexible IT is delivering these business rewards, ESG asked IT decision-makers to identify eight critical benefits of as-a-service-based flexible IT models. They responded as follows:
- Accelerated response time to address critical line-of-business (LOB) needs: 74%
- Increased management efficiency and simplified operations: 73%
- Accelerated cloud onboarding and migrations: 71%
- Accelerated application development and deployment: 69%
- Reduced IT infrastructure costs: 68%
- Avoided downtime and productivity gaps during recent challenging times: 65%
- Sped up time to market: 61%
- Reduced vendor lock-in, enabling greater workload portability: 56%
The respondents’ answers were cross-referenced with the degree to which their organizations have embraced flexible IT models. In every instance, respondents that were identified by ESG as Flexible IT Accelerators outpaced all other respondents in maximizing these eight benefits.
For example, 89% of Flexible IT Accelerators said they were able to respond faster to critical LOB needs versus only 63% of companies identified as Flexible IT Reactors. Nearly 90% of Accelerators said they could speed up IT onboarding and migrations, versus 58% of Reactors.
These were not the only benefits cited in the ESG research. Flexible IT Accelerators were also able to:
- Reduce service-level agreement noncompliance by 78%, eliminating two-thirds of SLA violations
- Experience 44% fewer public cloud incidents in the past 12 months versus Reactors
- Use automation to simplify and streamline operations to the tune of an average of 44% more time savings than Reactors
Taking the Next Step
One of the biggest advantages of flexible IT not cited directly in the report is that IT doesn’t have to rip and replace what it already has and can migrate at its own pace—enabling the organization to maximize the value of existing infrastructure and migrate quickly, safely and securely to new cloud-based, as-a-service consumption models.
If your organization is ready to take the next step in migrating to flexible IT, please visit Dell Technologies.
