Recently, IBM surveyed 380 CIOs and CTOs from mid-sized and large enterprises in the UK and US. The survey findings will give you a fair picture of where today’s businesses stand in terms of being future-ready.
State of Being Future-ready in 2021
60% – Business not ready for future IT needs
24% – Starting or yet to start their modernization journey
Rest – Somewhere in the middle of the transformationSource: IBM
Wise ones say that the ability to predict the future and act accordingly is the secret recipe for success. We couldn’t agree more. The only catch is that the future has become a little finicky and quite unpredictable. What is relevant today might as well cease to exist tomorrow. Who would have thought that one day, every business in the world would operate from remote locations?
Wondering whether your business is future IT-ready or not? Here are the five defining characteristics of a future-ready IT:
Agility
Scalability
Resiliency
Responsiveness
Efficiency
And achieving all these qualities is only possible when you upgrade your existing legacy infrastructure, either the entire setup or some components of it, depending on your business needs. But if you are planning for 2021 and beyond, you must carefully look at matters that are likely to make a significant impact on your business. So, what made IT modernization a business imperative in 2021?
Here are the 8 key causes organizations are considering IT modernization as their top-most business goal in 2021:
Now comes the most important question — how to modernize your IT and make it future-ready?
Three Pillars of IT Modernization
Modernization is precisely the marriage between your existing legacy systems and cloud services . But in a rush to adopt cloud services and join the bandwagon without having a comprehensive strategy or roadmap in place, organizations often miss unlocking the full potential of modernization.
Data
Modernization
Because the key to success in today’s data-driven world is data.
Right (data+insights) = Right Decisions
Application Modernization
Because today’s modern enterprises need modern applications to Innovate. Scale. Drive growth.
Workplace Modernization
Because a modern workplace is at the heart of enabling digital transformation.
Manage. Engage. Empower.
Data Modernization
Having a modern data estate is the first and foremost requirement for digital transformation. A modern database enables organizations to derive timely insights and creates the foundation for AI.
Gartner predicts that by 2022, 75% of database solutions will be deployed or migrated to the cloud. And according to IDC, worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 ZB by 2025, with as much of data residing in the cloud as in data centers.
Why does your business need it?
Modern data platform
Easy data management
Scalable single version of truth
Reliable and secure databases
Ensure business continuity
Avoid data gravity
Analyze data and gain insights
Reduce operational costs
But while migrating data to the cloud or modernizing your legacy databases help you unlock new insights to propel data-driven innovation, concerns such as source data complexity, expensive upfront costs, risk of losing or corrupting business-critical data, or unknowingly opening windows for security threats cloud the data modernization goals for many organizations.
Taking a strategic approach can safeguard organizations from the pitfalls of an unplanned data migration and modernization approach while ensuring a seamless transition to a new environment.
Application Modernization
The demand side of the business landscape is increasingly under pressure to meet the market’s changing needs, enhance value, and become more agile. On the other hand, the supply side must address its technical debt concerns, aging technology, and unsupportive platforms while minimizing the time, cost, and risks of digital transformation. Solution? Application modernization – taking legacy applications and modernizing them to fit a scalable, agile environment. Based on the different business needs, organizations can choose from rehost, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild, or replace their applications to renew focus on innovation.
Why does your business need it?
Automate deployments
Accelerate delivery
Scalability
Security
Easy maintenance
Reduce cost
Ensure business continuity
Increase collaboration & productivity
While app modernization has compelling business values, the fear of handling complex legacy applications or becoming cloud-dependent, budget woes, the need to balance stability and performance, and resistance to new technologies tend to create roadblocks for organizations, inadvertently hindering their innovation growth.
Reason why it is crucial to find the right partner who can guide you through the end-to-end app modernization process, provide you with the right tools and technologies, create an effective roadmap, and help you plan, prepare, migrate, and optimize your mission-critical applications.
Workplace Modernization
Last but not the least, in order to complete their modernization goals and gain an edge over competitors, organizations must enable their workforce with a modern workplace.
Transforming the workplace experience also requires a holistic strategy. Be it migrating content, upgrading SharePoint, or building new apps, by migrating and modernizing your Office 365 environments in a planned and phased manner can improve accessibility, productivity, collaboration and security.
Enterprise documents are often spread across multiple applications and storage systems, for e.g. Alfresco, File Shares, Google Drive, Box, or SharePoint. Deciding which document should be moved and which one should be removed/archived/left where it is can be a daunting task. It requires a flexible content integration platform that ensures seamless access to content from anywhere.
Why does your business need it?
TCO
Easy collaboration
Business continuity
Information security
Customization
Compliance standards
Storage options
Enhance user experience
For small and medium-scale organizations, lack of having metrics of content and its complexity or a right migration plan in place or the inability to validate migrated content pose serious threats to business continuity.
No matter whether you want to move to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, or Office 365 or build Power apps from scratch based on your exact business requirements, having an effective roadmap in place that allows you to analyze, prepare, collect and validate your crucial business documents from multiple sources to a single integrated platform is the key to a successful content migration.
The secret to avoiding modernization pitfalls
Remember the saying, “fail to prepare, prepare to fail?” Well, that’s especially true in the case of modernizing and migrating your IT infrastructure. Whether it’s data migration, Office 365 migration, or app migration, go to any migration unplanned, and you are guaranteed to face unwanted business disruption that can cost not only revenue loss but also loss of data and reputation.
The way out is to get expert advice before you plan to take the leap. Acuvate is a Microsoft Gold certified partner and has transformed 200+ reputed enterprises globally, including many Fortune 500. With over 14 years of experience in accelerating enterprise-wide digital transformation powered by AI accelerators, Acuvate has been instrumental in supporting migration and modernization journeys of businesses end-to-end.
For more information about our IT modernization & migration services, contact us.
