Companies Must Approach IT Modernization as a Journey
I believe we’re on the doorstep of very important changes in IT market conditions. IT groups have experimented with hybrid cloud, agile and DevOps, and businesses have experimented with analytics and increasingly experiment with AI. Companies are confident they can now move some pilot experiments into programs, knowing they will support the weight of business transformation but that programs must be run with an agile rather than waterfall approach. Furthermore, IT and shared services need to modernize so they can respond more effectively and quickly to the business needs for innovation and competitive advantage. However, companies often don’t realize up front that IT modernization in a digital world is very different and more complicated than traditional transformations.
Big IT modernization journeys
Primarily, IT modernization takes the form of several big journeys: hybrid cloud, agile / DevOps, more deeply embedded security, digital end-user compute workspace, for example. Over the next few years, companies will dedicate substantial focus and resources to ensure successful journeys in IT modernization and digital transformation. These journeys require change that cut across technology, people, process, talent and philosophy. Hence, we’re on the doorstep to journeys that will dramatically change the market for how companies deliver IT services.
For instance, there is a clear journey to hybrid cloud. The debate around cloud is over as to whether it will exist or whether companies will use it. It is largely accepted, and there is no longer a question as to whether companies can operate in a production world and secure the cloud. All those experiments and early debates are now receding. Companies also are now convinced that the path is not to one cloud (AWS or Azure) but a hybrid cloud in which companies take advantage of several public clouds, their own private cloud, and potentially attempt to turn their legacy estates into a legacy cloud.
Read more in my CIO blog: https://www.cio.com/article/3267892/digital-transformation/companies-must-approach-it-modernization-as-a-journey.html
