Logicalis US to CIOs: Software-Defined Practices May One Day Save Your Company

NEW YORK, July 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- When there's a new disruptive force in any industry, the difference between success and failure is the speed at which competing organizations can adapt.  The larger the organization, the more difficult it is to turn on a dime, especially when the company's computing systems are siloed and unable to interact with one another.  As a result, the whole idea of "digital transformation" is based on the need to drive more speed in business.  But, according to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), for most organizations, there are four roadblocks standing in the way.

"Just look at what's happening in retail as a perfect example. Many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have been caught completely off guard by the rise of significant online retailers, and by the time they realized what the problem was, it was too late to turn the ship around.  Their IT systems weren't ready. That's when Shadow IT creeps into a company as line-of-business is unable to wait for IT," says David Angradi, Director, Software-Defined Solutions, Logicalis US. "We've had clients who took months rather than minutes to deploy new virtual machines, and when you have that kind of cumbersome IT response, you have to start by inventorying what you have and making changes to gain that agility and speed back. If organizations want to avoid these problems, when purchasing new infrastructure and software, they should choose from a suite like HPE's that is designed to enable them to accelerate their path to the software-defined data center (SDDC)."

According to Angradi, you're either disrupting the status quo or being disrupted. This is what the software-defined movement is all about – giving organizations the agility they need to lead and to compete. 

"If we can automate and orchestrate important tasks, if we can maintain an interrelationship between the various solutions deployed throughout an organization, then we can speed up our response time when we need to turn the entire ship around," says Angradi. "The good news is, you are closer to software-defined than you think. To become software-defined doesn't require a rip-and-replace of your IT systems, but it does require cooperation among all facets of the business."

Four Problems CIOs Must Address Today
Getting all business stakeholders to the table to discuss IT issues is often easier said than done – and may be an instance in which a trusted solution provider skilled in software-defined solutions can be of great assistance. CIOs who recognize the problem of a splintered IT franchise know that cooperation is the key, but without that expert help, many find themselves facing four significant problems as they work to develop a more agile and responsive IT environment.

1. Lack of Cooperation: IT has long stood alone as an independent department, set apart from R&D, marketing and sales.  But for businesses to gain the agility they seek, stakeholders from every department must have a seat at the decision-making table. Silos have to become a thing of the past, an issue that many organizations are struggling with today. A lack of companywide cooperation when it comes to IT decision-making, however, will leave the organization vulnerable.  Instead of being a disrupter, you'll be disrupted because you weren't ready when change came knocking on your door.
2. Lack of Integrated Toolsets: When businesses acquire IT technologies, they typically do so to meet a specific project need or to solve a defined problem, but there is often no collaboration between siloed groups within IT or between IT and the larger organization as a whole. As a result, over a period of years, while these organizations have acquired significant IT assets, they have failed to integrate the tools they have in one department with those in other parts of the business. Until recently, few businesses thought that way. Imagine a developer, for example, that needs a new virtual machine for DevOps. IT tells R&D that it will take several weeks to deploy each new virtual machine, but the development team needs to deliver new applications every six to eight weeks.  The company won't be able to compete unless it makes a change.
3. Lack of Insight: The first step in getting control of the whole environment is to take an inventory of what exists.  Without integrated operational tools in place, having an up-to-date view of what the IT environment looks like is nearly impossible, and IT cannot manage what it doesn't know exists.  To create a high-velocity IT environment, IT needs to have automated processes in place that allow users to spin resources up and down at will, and it all starts with brining in the right tools to help inventory what is there now and to integrate those solutions to provide competitive advantage to the organization as a whole.
4. Lack of Maturity: The previous three problems combined create an IT organization that lacks the maturity to tackle disruptive innovations. If an organization is stuck in traditional IT processes, it lacks the flexibility to take advantage of agility-enhancing IT solutions like cloud, mobility, IoT and BYOD.  To resolve this, CIOs must first gain control of the IT environment, inventory solutions, and implement automation and orchestration to drive efficiencies; then, when a disruptive technology hits, IT won't have to inventory the environment before making a move because that has already been done. When the organization needs to respond to a new demand in the market, the CIO will have full control of the IT environment, and stakeholders can react quickly.  The key is to extract the IT intelligence that is currently buried deep within the various silos and put it into the software-defined layer.

Want to Learn More?

• You're closer to software-defined than you think; find out where to start in this Logicalis blog, then explore the Logicalis software-defined microsite to learn more: http://ow.ly/Slhv301Dqr8.
• Examine the benefits of a software-defined data center (SDDC) and the relationship between SDDC and the service-defined enterprise, then watch a video that ties it all together: http://ow.ly/qitz301J4qG.
• View a brief WatchIT video about SDDC featuring David Angradi, then download a Logicalis white paper, "IT by Wire: Delivering IT at the Speed of Business": http://ow.ly/mux3301DqjX.

About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international multi-skilled solution provider providing digital enablement services to help customers harness digital technology and innovative services to deliver powerful business outcomes.

Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications, media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace communications and collaboration, data and information strategies, and IT operation modernization.

We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific. It is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

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Media contacts:
Nickie Peters, Director of Marketing,
Logicalis US
[email protected] 
920-338-7622
www.us.logicalis.com

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US
[email protected] 
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com

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