Asia Pacific organisations report improvements following future-ready IT adoption

The study, commissioned by Dell, has been conducted among over 2,500 respondents from 11 countries globally, Dell announced in a press statement.

The study highlighted eight measurable business improvements as a result of future-ready IT adoption and it tracked over a three-year period from 2012 to 2015.

Based on the ranking, IDC has classed 16 per cent of all companies as Current Focused; 32 percent are Future Aware; one-third are Future Focused, while 18 percent are Future Creators. Future Creators are the most future-ready enterprises who lead with agile platforms and big data, while Current Focused organizations are defined as those that are still focused on traditional IT or still at the beginning of their technology journey, the statement said.

 “The Future Ready Enterprise Index has shown that the most future-ready organisations are able to successfully promote agility, scalability, and innovation in their business through the adoption of converged infrastructures, cloud, big data and analytics (BDA) solutions,” said Anothai Wetthayakorn, Managing Director, Dell Corporation (Thailand) and General Manager for Dell Indo-China.

“Mapping out four different stages in the future-ready journey, the white paper clearly highlights that being a ‘Future Creator’ in Asia Pacific is a clear competitive advantage, while staying ‘Current Focused’ tends to be a competitive disadvantage. Businesses that pay attention to where they are on their journey and adapt suitable practices within their unique business context will make the most of their technology investment.” 

The study suggested that organisations need real-time visibility to make effective decisions for successful business outcomes. As customer touch-points proliferate and new ways of capturing performance are introduced, organizations are looking for solutions that can cross and bridge multiple data types and sources so that they have the right data at their fingertips, at the right time to make the right decisions. Traditionally, such solutions do not exist off-the-shelf, and require specialized expertise to conceptualize and develop, according to the press statement.

The Future Ready Enterprise Index has found that Current Focused organizations have little or no BDA strategy, and any BDA outputs typically have little or no influence on decision makers. In contrast, Future Creators have implemented enterprise-wide BDA strategy, with findings treated seriously by decision makers. Specifically in Asia Pacific, 98 percent of decision-makers from organizations which are “Future Creators” have access to BDA at the right time to a significant event compared to 58 percent of executives at a Current Focused organization. This has led to faster organizational reaction time to business events or changes, which has driven improved business outcomes throughout the company.

Additionally, the white paper found that business units at Current Focused organizations do not execute IT-led cloud strategies, but instead use public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) on an ad hoc basis. In contrast, Future Creators maintain cross-cloud catalogs, plus audit/security and data control. Specific to APJ, over 50 percent of “Future Creator” organizations noted that cloud adoption has enabled BDA within their business, and most have seen more effective use of infrastructure and data resources. These have allowed the respondents to track usage and performance, leading to greater productivity and optimized outputs across the organization.

An example of a “Future Creator” organization that have successfully deployed cloud technologies to better utilize its IT and data resources is Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok. The leading private healthcare provider in Thailand operates a network of facilities and employs 3,000 healthcare professionals. Samitivej Hospital has embarked on the future-ready journey by upgrading its IT infrastructure, such as data centre storage, Cloud Computing and Data Recovery. This enabled the institution to deliver better, faster, and more cost-effective patient services.

Heterogeneous IT infrastructures have become increasingly complex, leading to higher total cost of ownership, more time spent on management and maintenance, and slowdowns in service delivery. As organizations grow, new technology is often incompatible with the existing infrastructure, requiring rip-and-replace upgrades that come with steep learning curves and uncertain returns on investment (ROI). “Future Creator” respondents from Asia Pacific highlighted greater resource utilization, greater IT staff productivity, improved business agility and flexibility to adapt to changes in the market as the top four benefits of hyper-converged infrastructures within the organization.

The results are clear: adopting advanced technologies which enable future readiness can benefit businesses, but organizations which are structured to be the most future ready, the Future Creators, benefit the most. By leveraging technologies such as cloud, converged infrastructure and BDA, organizations of any size can turn IT into a proactive business driver and achieve better business outcomes, Dell said in the statement.

At the same time, Dell also revealed findings from the Future Workforce Study commissioned by Dell and Intel, which identifies the global technology trends shaping the modern workplace. The findings show that many employees believe their current workplace is not effectively making use of the latest technology advances, but expect them to do so as remote work is increasingly viewed as providing both quality of life and productivity benefits.

Almost half of global employees believe their current workplace is not smart enough, while 42 percent of millennial employees say they are willing to quit their job if office technologies are not up to their standard. Therefore, the addition of collaborative tools and innovative technologies, such as internet of things (IoT) and Virtual Reality (VR), will soon become vital to the workplace of the near future.

The 2016 Future Workforce Study, polled nearly 4,000 full-time employees from small, medium and large businesses in 10 countries, and exposed that over half (57 percent) of all employees believe they will be working in a smart office within the next five years, while 51 percent believe that better technologies will make face-to-face meetings redundant within the next five years.

The research shows that the influx of new technology is having a significant impact on what workers expect from their employer, and that workplaces which don’t enact these new advances will be left behind. "The workplace is reaching a tipping point. Today’s workers have a growing expectation that their employers integrate the latest technologies seamlessly and securely into their working lives," said Anothai. "Employees have seen first-hand the ways new technologies can help them do their jobs better, and are hungry to use the latest advancements to be more productive. While this may seem daunting, it’s a business-critical opportunity for companies to be at the forefront of the future workplace and enable the future workforce."