How today’s IT leaders are daring to be different

Singapore: To better understand how IT leaders in businesses across the globe are rising to today’s challenges and daring to be different, SUSE commissioned Insight Avenue, an independent market research agency to explore these issues in more depth.

This report discusses the findings of a large global study spanning 22 countries and consisting of more than 2000 interviews with IT leaders and application developers in businesses with at least 250 employees.

Building on previous research published by SUSE in 2017, this report explores the latest must-have technologies and approaches, and explores how hybrid cloud and software-defined infrastructure now underpin IT transformation efforts.

The research finds IT leaders are under pressure to deliver tangible outcomes in the next two years through technology investments – balancing the need to simplify how the business is run, alongside modernization and scaling the business. Agility is the core driver of IT transformation efforts and IT leaders are laser-focused on core technologies to deliver tangible outcomes.

While hybrid cloud and software-defined infrastructure sit at the heart of transformation, IT leaders are struggling to develop and source skills in AI, analytics, IoT and hybrid cloud. Reducing application development release cycles to months even weeks is seen as core to improving agility; and DevOps, micro-services and containers contribute to future-fit infrastructure.

Some of the key stats from the research are as follows:

• Outcomes-Focused Tech
• 88% of IT leaders see the next two years as critical for making a tangible difference through their tech investments
• Two-thirds (67%) say they are under more pressure to deliver tangible outcomes for the business than 12 months ago
• The tech investment pillars making a tangible difference in how businesses operate over the next two years are simplifying how the business is run (65% say very important); modernizing how the business is run (52%) and accelerating change / scaling the business (51%)
• Tech and approaches seen as most important in helping businesses to deliver this tangible difference are High Performance Computing – HPC (83%), IoT (82%), edge computing (80%), the democratization of tech (75%) and open source (70%)
• Increasing agility is the number 1 driver of IT transformation efforts

IT leaders are more focused than other markets on simplifying how their businesses are run as the key tech investment pillar. The democratization of tech and open source, alongside HPC, edge computing and IoT are identified as key approaches to help businesses deliver a tangible difference.

The future of the datacenter is seen as hybrid cloud, and after two years of strong adoption momentum in hybrid cloud, this is now stabilizing in India as well as in other markets. More than half have migrated workloads from public to private cloud, but this is more likely to be seen as a difficult process in India and businesses here also state that budget allocation is failing to keep up with demands to transform.

IT leaders are highly focused on gaining experience to progress professionally and personally, particularly in hybrid cloud and IoT, and responsibility for learning and development is moving away from the employer to tech professionals themselves. As in other markets, reducing application delivery cycle times to enhance agility is a focus moving forwards.

IT leaders in India

Outcomes-Focused Tech

• 89% of IT leaders in India see the next two years as critical for making a tangible difference through their tech investments. 74% say they are under more pressure to deliver tangible outcomes for the business than 12 months ago
• The tech investment pillars making a tangible difference in how businesses in India operate over the next two years are simplifying how the business is run (75% say very important), accelerating change / scaling the business (60%) and modernizing how the business is run (57%)
• Tech and approaches seen as most important in helping businesses in India to deliver this tangible difference are High Performance Computing – HPC (92%), the democratization of tech (90%), IoT (88%) and edge computing (87%). 82% say open source
• Increasing agility is the number 1 driver of IT transformation efforts in organizations in India

The Present (and Future) is Hybrid Cloud

• In 2017, hybrid cloud use was forecast to increase in 69% of organizations in India and this appears to have been the case. In 2020, 35% are forecasting an increase in hybrid cloud use over the next two years while 58% expect use to stay the same
• For 78% hybrid cloud represents the future of the datacenter
• 51% have migrated workloads from public to private cloud in the last 12 months (48% in 2017) with 43% expecting to do this in the next 12 months
• 79% say migrating workloads from public to private cloud is difficult

SDI Underpinning IT Transformation Efforts

• 79% say optimizing their datacenter is critical to their innovation efforts but 81% say that budget allocation is not keeping up with demands from the business to transform
• 98% think software-defined infrastructure in the datacenter can support IT transformation efforts
• The key benefits are faster delivery of IT resources (79%), simplifying data center management (77%) and enabling modern IT approaches (68%)
• 37% currently use software-defined storage, with an additional 30% expecting to do so in the next 12 months

Hybrid Cloud and AI Skills Issues Thwart Growth

IT leaders in India see that a lack of skills in hybrid cloud (64%), IoT (62%) and AI and machine learning (51%) is making it difficult for them to advance as quickly as they’d like. Coupled with this, IT leaders see hybrid cloud (84%), IoT (81%) and AI / machine learning (75%) as very important for them to gain more experience to progress personally and professionally
89% say tech professionals are increasingly taking responsibility for their own learning and development

The Great Application Delivery Race

84% of IT leaders would like to reduce application delivery cycle times. 92% of IT leaders and application developers see delivering new applications and updates more rapidly would improve agility and 93% expect to release new applications more frequently.