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IT that matters in the new machine age prioritizes cybersecurity, innovation, time-to-market and customer experience over cost-cutting, according to our latest study. Heres what the future looks like for IT infrastructure, as traditional businesses make the digital shift, including our HEROES framework to guide you along the way. By Manish BahlTHE FUTURE OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE3The Future of IT Infrastructure | Executive SummaryAs traditional businesses adapt to the realities of the new machine age breathless time to market, intelligently enhanced everything, meaningful and personalized experiences the implications for IT have been profound. It is no exaggeration to say that the core differentiator for a successful busi-ness today rests on the readiness of its IT infrastructure and that an inflexible, sluggish, inefficient infrastructure poses a bigger competitive threat than any ingenious start-up or disruptive market force. While the legacy IT industry of servers, databases and cables is still important, it has essentially become a utility, taking a backseat to the need for an agile, flexible and quickly scalable technology foundation to drive business. Companies with legacy technology architectures, therefore, face a dilemma: striking a balance between the present and future state of IT infrastructure. To achieve this equilibrium, the first ballast to discard is ITs traditional obsession with cost-cutting. The simple fact is, a lower cost but completely irrelevant backbone will condemn you to lose in whatever market you operate in. To learn more about the future needs of IT infrastructure, Cognizants Center for The Future of Work surveyed top IT executives at leading companies around the world, the majority of which have been in business for more than 15 years (see Appendix, page 24, for more details on the survey methodology). Our objective was to gain insights into the changes leaders are making in their orga-nizations technology infrastructure, as well as the shifting nature of IT work, operations, perfor-mance metrics and jobs to re-tool for the digital age. Based on our findings, we have developed a framework to help traditional businesses systematically move toward the new way of work for IT. The framework, dubbed “HEROES,” involves change in five areas: hybrid cloud architectures, edge computing, robotic process automation (RPA), obsoles-cence of old IT and enterprise security. Cutting across all five categories is the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI). Global business and technology decision makers can use our study findings, detailed in this report, as a practical guide to maximizing the strategic value of their IT investments. This report is intended as a call to action that will enhance partnerships between IT and business to better manage the transformative impact of the new machine age.THE NEXT FIVE YEARS WILL DRIVE MORE CHANGE THAN THE PREVIOUS 50| The Future of IT Infrastructure4The amount of change expected in the next few years is daunting, relentless and coming fast. Nearly 70% of the executives we surveyed agreed that their industry will change more in the next five years than it did in the previous 50. Little wonder, considering phenomena like the estimated three to five billion new consumers due to come online from developing economies, providing a mega-surge to the global economy;1the number of IoT devices outnumbering the worlds population by the end of 2017;2and perhaps most important, the encroachment of AI into numerous entrenched societal challenges. In fact, 68% of study respondents agreed that AI will have a transformational impact on their business by 2020.5The Future of IT Infrastructure | Respondents are already pushing ahead; we found that every business function, from sales and marketing, to finance, customer service and IT operations, is about to undergo a massive transfor-mation. Amid this widespread flux, business priorities will also shift between now and 2020 (see Figure 1, next page), according to our research: Cybersecurity will be key to building the brand. Companies that think cybersecurity is an IT problem or priority have already been hacked by the future. By 2020, cybersecurity will top the list of business priorities, according to respondents. Online security threats are now a fact of life, moving organizations ability to mitigate risk from an inconvenient need to a necessary compet-itive advantage. According to our study, companies endured an average of 40 security incidents in 2016 alone, costing each around $4.5 million. Sixty-eight percent of respondents suffered loss of reputation and brand value as a result of a breach. Numerous additional incidents likely escaped the businesss notice. Respondents see the situation worsening, with 60% saying there are more emerging threats than they can currently control, illustrating that the underlying IT infrastructure is ill-equipped for the new machine age. Customer-facing technology will remain supreme. Although customer-facing technology transformation (websites, mobile apps, etc.) drops from first to third place between now and 2020 in our study, this priority is clearly here to stay. The winners in the digital economy will be those that own the customer relationship. In fact, 68% of respondents named improving data management capabilities to enhance the customer experience as a top priority. AI will emerge as a key factor, with 66% of respondents citing the use of AI to better target customer offers. More than half of respondents (60%) plan to invest in chatbots to offer new customer interaction experiences and improve customer engagement. Innovation is no longer a luxury. Time-to-market of new products, services and experiences is a must in the digital economy. On average today, respondents said their company launched two or three new products or services annually, each taking seven to eight months to get to market. That is simply no longer fast enough. Almost half of survey respondents acknowledged that five years from now, those launch times will need to be cut in half. This will only happen if companies look outside their own four walls and join outside ecosystems, via platforms and partnerships. Companies that exercise “innovation for a purpose” will succeed, as opposed to those building “just another” cool product or service.| The Future of IT Infrastructure6 Cost-cutting disappears as a top priority. Leading businesses are already using automation today to relentlessly cut costs, and many will have already reaped the cost benefits by 2020. The future focus will be less about cost-cutting and more about investing in technologies and capa-bilities necessary for changing business requirements. For instance, Adidas Russia shifted its supply chain management focus from lowering costs to increasing sales. With better data insights, the company improved its delivery time to customers, which helped increase sales by up to 40%.3From Business-Serving, to Business-Changing As business priorities quickly shift, so must the priorities and role of IT. Over the next 24 to 36 months, we will see a new phase develop for IT organizations, in which they are measured on a very different set of metrics than ever before. The IT mandate will stretch beyond the familiar realm of satisfying customers and employees, collaborating with the business and reducing costs, to sealing the customer relationship, discovering new business value and enabling business agility and inno-vation while also ensuring security (see Figure 2, next page). In response, IT leaders are renewing their focus on the following areas: Strategically embedding themselves in the business to reclaim the mandate of “preferred partner.” Three-quarters of respondents are doing everything they can to break down remain-ing barriers between IT and their business peers. They are focused on spending more time with business leaders (76%), aligning their services portfolio with business functions (68%) and implanting IT staff in business units (56%) to encourage collaboration. The encroachment of AI into many business functions will require increased business-IT collaboration, particularly as the goals for AI initiatives are to gain new and profitable insights into customers. Sixty-five percent Changing Times Spur Shift in Business PrioritiesWhich of the following will be your business priorities in the next 12 months? How will these change by 2020?50% 55% 56% 61% 67% Invest in cybersecurityto gain andkeep consumer trustCost reductionDevelop new digitalrevenue streamsEnter new marketsTransform customer-facingtechnology to improvecustomer acquisition/retentionNext 12 Months Top five categories 56% 60% 61% 63% 70% New strategic alliancesor joint venturesAccelerate time to marketfor new product/service offeringsTransform customer-facingtechnologyto improvecustomer acquisition/retention Embrace “platform thinking”to encourage business innovationInvest in cybersecurityto gain and keepconsumer trust2020 Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work Base: 1,018 senior IT executives Figure 1of respondents are creating, planning or commissioning AI solutions with both IT and business involved. Increased collaboration is also helping IT address shadow-IT operations by providing flexibility to business users to source applications and technology that elevate enterprise work, while maintaining data control, security, governance and compliance. Our data shows that, on aver-age, 35% of existing enterprise applications are developed and used without ITs direct involve-ment. With virtual assistants, self-service portals and service catalogs, IT can operate at the speed of business users expectations. In fact, 74% of executives are piloting or planning to use intelligent assistants for decision support, for example, to guide staff to provide better advice, improve decision-making or make more relevant offers to customers. With increased collabora-tion, 55% of executives successfully moved shadow IT operations into the mainstream. 7The Future of IT Infrastructure | As Business Priorities Change, So Does the Role of ITWhat are the key metrics on which IT performance is measured today, and how will that change by 2020?48% 52% 55% 62% 64% Cost control Employee satisfaction Collaboration withbusiness units Security and riskmanagementCustomer satisfactionToday 56% 61% 66% 71% 73% Business innovation Speed of development anddeployment of applicationsSecurity and riskmanagementCustomer satisfaction Customer acquisition/retention2020 Top five categories Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work Base: 1,018 senior IT executives Figure 2| The Future of IT Infrastructure8 Becoming a champion of fast innovation. More than half (58%) of respondents see ITs role today as championing business innovation, working alongside product and business unit teams to rapidly test, deploy and scale new business innovations in their organizations. This trend is likely to continue, with respondents planning to increase the proportion of their IT budgets spent on business innovation from an average of 16% today to 28% by 2020. One example of this trend is a move made by the long-time CIO at Ford Motor Co., Marcy Klevorn, who is changing the way the automakers IT organization works. Klevorn, who now heads up the automakers smart mobility unit, spurred the adoption of Agile and DevOps programming and shifted to a bimodal IT approach to encourage experimentation with emerging technologies.4 Doubling-down on customer centricity by focusing on applications. Applications are now central to improving the customer experience, developing new revenues and streamlining busi-ness processes. Speed of deployment has taken center stage, as new releases are expected weekly or daily. In fact, 73% of our respondents agreed that infrastructure and operations pro-fessionals would become more application-oriented in the future, and nearly 60% of respon-dents are planning to use machine algorithms to build new and better applications. Making sense of data. Its a mammoth task for IT to integrate data silos and help the business derive meaningful insights from data. According to respondents, only 44% of the data they col-lect is actually analyzed, and only 17% of companies have created new products and services purely built on data. A majority of respondents (68%) are either piloting or plan to use big data/business analytics solutions, whereas nearly one-third (27%) are already doing so to make sense of ever increasing data volumes. IT departments, however, need to be cautious of setting expec-tations from big data investments and consider blending machine learning with big data to power the modern enterprise. Respondents plan to increase the proportion of their IT budgets spent on business innovation from an average of 16% today to 28% by 2020. 9The Future of IT Infrastructure | HEROES: THE FUTURE OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE Organizations must adapt their IT infrastructures to the changes in business and technological priorities. The IT infrastructure needs to become agile, responsive, flexible, secure, scalable and simple to manage. In an era when start-ups can disrupt entire industries in weeks or months, a companys technological backbone should indeed, must - give it the ability (and agility) to immediately adapt or, better yet, set the pace. In our study findings, we see leaders developing the required IT infrastructure by focusing on what we call the HEROES framework, detailed in the sections below, which will reshape a new generation of IT. All five areas of the framework hybridization, edge computing, robotic process automation, obsolescence of old IT and enterprise security will be impacted by the growing influence of AI technologies, which will both “upgrade” the existing IT infrastructure and lay the foundation for the future. In fact, 61% of executives agreed that AI will fundamentally change their IT infrastruc-ture procurement and consumption model over the next five years. In short, AI will be at the heart of the new IT infrastructure. | The Future of IT Infrastructure10Sixty-one percent of executives agreed that AI will fundamentally change their IT infrastructure procurement and consumption model over the next five years. In short, AI will be at the heart of the new IT infrastructure. 11The Future of IT Infrastructure | ybrid Cloud: The Genesis of Agile ITFrom our survey, it is clear that cloud computing will simplify todays complex state of infra-structure management (see Figure 3, next page). In fact, 61% of organizations consider cloud to be a key enabler of driving business priorities. A hybrid cloud strategy which incorporates a mix of on-site, public and private cloud makes sense for most businesses today, as it enables IT teams to select the right virtual infrastructure for each use case. This
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