Fast IT: Capturing True Value for the Digital Enterprise

Today’s CIOs lead in a world where rapid innovation is the key to success and disruption is a constant threat. Now, more than ever, technology is one of the biggest drivers of achieving successful business outcomes. In this new era of Internet of Everything (IoE) computing, CIOs are being called upon to streamline and optimize complex infrastructures, transform their operating models to drive innovation, and, as importantly, leverage this innovation to capture their share of the IoE Value at Stake.  Not an easy task for even the most experienced CIO.

Traditional IT infrastructures are complex, manual, and non-programmable — they can’t quickly respond to the needs of a given business. Because of this, the bulk of IT resources are often consumed with “keeping the lights on”, leaving few resources to drive transformation or innovation. Unfortunately, competitive pressures are leaving lines of business owners unwilling to wait for IT resources.   It’s become patently clear that a fundamental shift is needed for IT to be able to meet the demanded innovation challenge or the shift to outside vendors to meet businesses’ solutions needs will continue to accelerate.

The IT organization itself must become both a source and a facilitator of disruptive innovation. This requires a new model for IT, which we call Fast IT. Fast IT can rapidly increase connections among people, process, data, and things in an agile, programmable, and secure way. It provides a unifying framework to integrate major technology transitions with the organizational changes required to meet the accelerating demands across the company. To quantify the model benefits, Cisco Consulting Services conducted a comprehensive global study to determine how the Fast IT is impacting our customers and enabling them to innovate faster.

Consulting Services surveyed more than 1,400 senior IT leaders in Brazil, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We interviewed leading industry analysts, authors, academics, IT executives, and IT practitioners and compared these responses with our own learnings from numerous customer engagements.

Today less than 20 percent of total IT spending is allocated to transformation-oriented initiatives. One of the largest benefits we estimate is a 20 to 25 percent reduction in IT operating costs as a result of implementing Fast IT, re-invested customers can use these benefits — what we call “IoE dividends” — to address new business capabilities. With these new “IoE dividends”, IT can effectively double their contribution to the company’s overall “innovation capacity”.

Our survey also showed that more than two-thirds of respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed they are not realizing the full value of Cloud resources. Fast IT also enables organizations to move seamlessly through the “fabric of clouds,” and determine the best combination to use as business conditions shift.

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The best IT organizations will leverage an ecosystem of diverse cloud capabilities and service delivery partners as well.

With Fast IT as part of the arsenal, Cisco Consulting can help companies transform an organization’s operating models, maximize their “Innovation Capacity”, and invest in disruptive innovation. Fast IT leverages technology, and applies analytics, insight, and rapid prototyping to deliver innovative business outcomes that will allow companies to capture their true Value at Stake in a the IoE economy.

How can your firm begin or continue the journey to become a digital enterprise and capture your true value at stake? I recommend you start by reviewing our IoE Value Index. Please share your comments here with us about how your own journey aligns to our findings. As always, please contact us if you would like to take a more personal view of how to capture your Value at Stake.