Here in the research department at CompTIA, we are collecting data for this year’s cloud research and thinking about the changes that have transpired — or not — in the five years that we have been studying the topic. One of the themes within the analysis is an issue we have been considering for the past year; the paradigm shift in the approach to enterprise IT. Cloud computing, mobility and Big Data analytics are not merely new options for a company to utilize as they build out their IT architecture. Instead, they create a new platform that drives a radically different technology strategy.
This new strategy will create a new economic equation for businesses. Plummeting prices for technology and drastically decreased transaction costs are triggering explosive adoption across all lines of business. In this environment, determining total cost of ownership becomes much more complex as IT continues moving away from a self-contained function and becomes more deeply ingrained into existing operations and innovative ventures.
We see this play out in discussions on technology benefits. CompTIA mobility research has consistently shown that productivity, not cost savings, is the primary benefit of mobile device integration. In fact, this year’s study found that most companies are making additional investments to support mobility rather than treat it as a cost-neutral substitution for pre-existing methods. With cloud, cost cutting was seen as a primary benefit in early stages of adoption, but its importance has diminished as businesses discover hidden costs and gravitate toward other benefits, such as agility.
This raises some interesting questions for IT accounting. The IT department can potentially migrate from a cost center to a profit center, but it will require new behavior throughout the organization. If the economics are truly changing and the value equation is becoming more complex, the primary challenge will be in measuring results. The first step will be in translating these newfound benefits like productivity and agility into metrics. These metrics could be tied to traditional business outcomes, or they could be something new, designed to directly measure the intended benefit. Any new metric will likely be a cross-department effort, and IT departments or providers can position themselves as the keepers of this new activity.
The IT function will also have some changes to make internally. The most common measure of IT success has been reliability — making sure that systems are consistently available for doing business. This will still be needed, but there will also be a need for moving quickly in order to push the business forward. Some amount of breakage and failure will have to be tolerated, as long as the long-term goals are still met. In addition, IT will need to figure out how to place a value on items such as security and integration, which require substantial effort but do not produce immediately obvious results.
Establishing new metrics and changing the discussion around delivered value will be major undertakings. IT firms, especially managed services providers, have likely built some expertise in these areas already — but the challenge is growing. The dialog will require technical know-how, and it will also require communication skills and business savvy. The Track4Techs at ChannelCon 2014 aims to cover all of these areas, giving IT professionals the tools they need to become a more critical part of business moving forward.
Seth Robinson is CompTIA’s director for technology analysis and market research.
