THE VIRTUAL SPACE RACEHow IT with The Right Stuff creates a competitive advantage

A STUDY BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP BY

The rise of mobile and cloud has empowered more front office workers to take control over their own IT destiny. This study answers the question “is IT equipped to handle the implications of this shift?”

Demand for an agile, efficient IT infrastructure is at an all-time high, yet most organizations lack the capacity to quickly deploy and manage applications on and off premises in response to the needs of front office employees and customers.

Leveraging new technology to compete in the marketplace is a virtual space race, one in which organizations with the right IT infrastructure have the competitive advantage to respond quicker and plant their flag first in the market.

Methodology: Softchoice, one of the largest technology solutions and services providers in North America, partnered with VMware,

the industry-leading virtualization software company, to gauge enterprise IT departments’ responsiveness to the increasingly complex

technology demands of front office employees. They surveyed 250 IT managers and 750 line-of-business (sales, marketing, operations,

finance, etc.) managers across the U.S. to examine their expectations around IT department performance and IT infrastructure agility.

Introduction

Despite front office expectations for instant gratification, IT often takes months to deploy a new application.

30% take 1-6 months

28% take over 6 months

From the Earth to the Moon

The gap between front office expectations and the back office’s ability to deliver has never been so wide.

What is IT Thinking?

We asked IT managers to rank tasks based on what they ideally would like to do and what they really do.

Ideal 1. Security 2. Maintenance 3. Strategy 4. Help Desk

Real 1. Maintenance 2. Security 3. Help Desk 4. Strategy

Ideally, IT Managers want to spend more time on security and strategic priorities, and less time on maintenance.

In reality, they spend most of their time on maintenance and the least on strategy.

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IT Managers

65% think their colleagues view them as a

help desk and not a strategic partner

55% think their colleagues view them as a gatekeeper versus an enabler

70% spend less than 25% of their weekon strategic projects

28% think they should spend 25-50% of their time on strategic projects

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80% see IT as a cost center versus a revenue generator

73% think app deployments should take less than a month,while 25% expect it to take 1-5 days

57% think their organization should invest more in IT, and 3 out of 4 of them are willing to spend more of their own budget to do it

31% don’t involve IT when purchasing new software for their department. Half of them said it’s because they have their own technology budget

Front Office Managers █

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Not Ready for LaunchMost IT departments lack the right infrastructure to take their organizations to the next level.

Most organizations lack the IT infrastructure needed to compete with the best-in-class.

61% virtualize less than half of their IT environments

46% automate ¼ or less of the processes associated with application rollouts

46% have no hybrid cloud capabilities 25% don’t have centralized management of their IT environment

64% don’t have chargeback capabilities

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Despite front office expectations for instant gratification, IT often takes months to deploy a new application.

30% take 1-6 months

28% take over 6 months

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What you need to create a more agile, efficient IT infrastructure:

Standardize and centralize infrastructure that supports software-defined solutions

Virtualize your compute, network and storage

Automate the apps in your data center with scripts and policies

Connect your cloud infrastructure and manage as one system

The Right Stuff

Gaining A Competitive Advantage“One small step for IT, one giant leap for IT’s relevance.”

4x more likely to deploy a new app within 5 days2x more likely to move processing workloads across servers the same day3x more likely to accommodate front office requests the same week

Compared to those that don’t, IT managers that have the right* infrastructure are…

*Infrastructure that meets front office employee needs from responsiveness and capacity to connectivity and remote access.

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5x more likely to be very or extremely satisfied with new software rollouts

5x more likely to believe IT spends plenty of time on strategic projects that support their departments’ needs

Compared to those that don’t, front office managers that have the right infrastructure are…

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Managers that don’t have the right infrastructure…

…are far more likely to think their organization needs to increase its technology spend.

IT managers: 83%Front office managers: 71%

However, at least half of those with the right infrastructure still think their workplace needs to spend more on technology.

IT managers: 62%Front office managers: 50%

ConclusionsOrganizations with agile, efficient IT infrastructure can implement new processes faster, respond quicker to employee and customer needs, and focus more on growth and innovation. Front office managers and executives are also far more likely to consider their IT colleagues as strategically relevant to their overall success if they can support their growing need to quickly implement, and seamlessly access, new work apps from anywhere. Having the right IT infrastructure that is software-defined, centrally managed, highly virtualized and highly automated is the key to winning the virtual space race.

Contact Us

www.softchoice.com/vmwarewww.softchoice.com