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​ICT budgets on the balance: Operations, transformation and innovation

​ICT budgets on the balance: Operations, transformation and innovation

'When organisations can find ways to reduce operational spend and instead direct it towards innovation and differentiation, it provides not just cost savings, but also productivity increases and a more creative, forward-looking organisation,' notes Rodney Gedda of Telesyte

A new report from Telsyte finds that three-quarters of IT budget (75 per cent) are spent on operations and transformation programs “keeping the lights” with only 25 per cent left for innovation and operational cost saving.

To drive more innovation, CIOs must address their number one business priority - reducing operating expenses - and free their organisations from a complex collection of backup, storage and virtualisation systems to ensure applications are online and protected from failures and cyberattacks, according to the report From backup to availability.

“When organisations can find ways to reduce operational spend and instead direct it towards innovation and differentiation, it provides not just cost savings, but also productivity increases and a more creative, forward-looking organisation," notes Rodney Gedda, senior analyst at Telsyte and principal author of the report.

"Moving from legacy backup to modern availability is a clear opportunity for businesses to take this kind of step.”

With the penetration of private clouds among enterprises approaching 45 per cent by 2019, and public cloud Infrastructure-as-a Service (IaaS) forecast to reach 85 per cent by the same year, data protection and availability are critical for every type of workload, according to the report.

The report supports the 2016 State of the CIO research that the key challenge for CIOs is finding the correct balance between business innovation and operational excellence.

When organisations can find ways to reduce operational spend and instead direct it towards innovation and differentiation, it provides not just cost savings, but also productivity increases and a more creative, forward-looking organisation. - Rodney Gedda, Telesyte
When organisations can find ways to reduce operational spend and instead direct it towards innovation and differentiation, it provides not just cost savings, but also productivity increases and a more creative, forward-looking organisation. - Rodney Gedda, Telesyte

Modernising for innovation

The report looks at how businesses manage their infrastructure and build investment strategies that will save costs, deliver efficiencies and provide corporate peace of mind in today’s always-on environment.

“With organisations now having more processes online than ever before, the need for data protection and fast recovery is becoming ever more critical," says Don Williams, vice president, ANZ at Veeam, which commissioned the report.

"With most of the IT budget locked up in operational processes, enterprises are managing a complex network of clients and servers — often without a concerted approach to availability," he states. "Adding to this complexity is a growing mix of mobile devices and cloud services where data is generated outside the reach of routine backups.”

The report notes CIOs and business leaders should evaluate the cost of downtime to their organisation and prepare a modern infrastructure environment with availability, not just backups, as a priority.

Fewer concerns about data protection and application availability will lead to more ability — and budget — to turn operations into innovation, it states.

With organisations now having more processes online than ever before, the need for data protection and fast recovery is becoming ever more critical. - Don Williams, Veeam
With organisations now having more processes online than ever before, the need for data protection and fast recovery is becoming ever more critical. - Don Williams, Veeam

Data availability

Telsyte’s research details how CIOs and IT leaders can drive more innovation by eliminating manual backups with modern data availability tools and practices.

It provides a set of strategic planning recommendations for CIOs and IT teams that include:

  • Assessing the customer experience risk: What is the impact on the customer resulting from the time it takes to get the data and applications they need running in the event of a problem, and what is the possibility of data loss due to errors and lack of testing?
  • Steady on backup services: Get the right service at the right price to let you shift budget from operations to innovation.
  • Best of breed for virtualised backups: No one vendor dominates the virtualisation and cloud space, a best-of-breed approach to availability is essential for the best outcome across multiple platforms.
  • Prepare for cloud data protection: Cloud services do not mean data is protected and highly available. Workloads both on and off-premises can fall victim to poor data management and downtime.
  • Reduce testing times: The ability to test as backups as they are performed is crucial to restoration and disaster recovery.

Send news tips and comments to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz

Follow CIO New Zealand on Twitter:@cio_nz

Follow Divina Paredes on Twitter: @divinap

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