Business Technology Roundtable

Multinational enterprise CEOs, and others within the most forward-looking progressive organization C-suite, look to their CIO to inform and guide them on digital transformation best practices. The global COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated economic impact, have provided CIOs the opportunity to increase their influence on strategic planning. According to the latest research by Gartner Inc. , CIOs now have the attention of the executive leadership team in a very compelling way. The enterprise's path to the future is made possible by IT-enabled innovation, and both boards of directors and CEOs now acknowledge the role that business technology has on Digital Growth. Building on Strategic Digital Business Initiatives These key strategic relationships have given CIOs the platform to address their next big challenge in the coming weeks and months of 2021 -- digital business acceleration. Savvy CIOs can convince senior business leaders to modernize their IT and network infrastructure to ...

Across the globe, increased Internet use will fuel new growth in the Global Networked Economy . Mobile Internet users will create new demands and expectations for mobile networking infrastructure. This ongoing growth trend is highlighted by the adoption and use of mobile applications (apps). Meanwhile, enterprise C-suite leadership teams contemplate digital transformation agendas that are enabled by the significant new technology investments by telecom network service providers. That, in turn, will drive accelerated enterprise investment in business technology-based innovations.  Executive Summaries for Digital Transformation Fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications will support more than 10 percent of the world’s mobile connections by 2023, according to the latest Cisco Annual Internet Report. The average 5G speed will be 575 megabits per second or 13 times faster than the average mobile connection. With advanced performance capabilities, 5G will deliver more dynamic m...

In many organizations today, Information Technology (IT) is more than a utility, it has become an essential platform for their ongoing business development. Therefore, they crave a superior IT experience for their employees and other key stakeholders. For most, cloud computing is a fundamental ingredient of the digital transformation agenda. The common commercial use cases for public cloud services have already been exploited by many organizations. Front-office applications -- such as customer relationship management, online commerce, and numerous consumer-facing apps -- constitute the bulk of the workloads that reside on cloud service provider shared infrastructure. These initial use cases have validated the proven benefits of cloud computing architectures that are appealing to software developers -- including speed of deployment, dynamic resource acquisition, application elasticity, and service reuse across workloads. Leveraging the inherent benefits of cloud service offerings,...

Now more than ever, CEOs and their leadership teams must counter the threat of digital disruption. Within the evolving global economy, debate and analysis about business technology adoption must result in purposeful action. Even the trailing organizations are prepared to learn something actionable from their trailblazer peers. The following statistics and insights are excerpts from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) Global C-suite Study (19th edition). IBM’s latest worldwide study draws on input from 12,854 respondents across 6 C-suite roles, from 112 countries. The C-suite is evenly divided on whether the focus in the future will shift from established markets to new ones. In two areas, however, C-suite executives stand in close agreement: how they will change their value propositions and scale their value chains. Sixty-eight percent of C-suite executives expect organizations to emphasize customer experience over products. Sixty-three percent believe that most organizat...

The World Economic Forum annual meeting is a high-profile gathering that brings together leaders of global society. The heads and members of more than 100 governments, top executives of the 1,000 foremost global companies, and numerous others collaborate at the beginning of each year to define priorities and shape agendas. The theme for Davos-Klosters 2019 is "Globalization 4.0: Shaping a New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution." A key component of the international debate will be about how the transformation is introducing technologies at a speed and scale unparalleled in history. Meanwhile, digital business innovation is enabled by access to essential telecom infrastructure. The internet combines thousands of public and private networks from around the world, which together are the key foundation for the Global Networked Economy . And since its inception in 1984, more than 4.7 zettabytes of internet protocol (IP) data traffic have already flowed...

Guided by senior executive goals for digital transformation, more organizations are increasing their use of cloud computing technologies. The typical multi-cloud mix includes a blend of public cloud, private cloud and traditional IT services. Finding the best-fit service mix starts with the business requirements. The latest Global Cloud Index (GCI) 2016-2021 from Cisco focuses on the worldwide market outlook for enterprise data center virtualization and cloud computing services. Today's digital business is enabled by a Hybrid IT infrastructure that supports the deployment of cloud-based solutions. Driven by the surging enthusiasm for digital reinvention projects, data center traffic is growing fast. The market study authors forecast global cloud data center traffic will reach 19.5 zettabytes (ZB) per year by 2021 -- that's up from 6.0 ZB per year in 2016. Globally, cloud data center traffic will represent 95 percent of total data center traffic by 2021, compared to 88 per...

Digital technologies have altered how people and businesses interact. The potential for dislocation from ongoing digital transformation has created unprecedented levels of C-suite discussion. The decisive market leaders have heeded the warnings and taken bold actions. That said, if you’re one of those Chief Technology Officers (CTO) who previously responded to this scenario by making small incremental adjustments to your IT agenda, then you’re potentially at risk. Any relief from those prior tweaks tend to be short-lived. The same issues will likely resurface. An Introduction to Digital Reinvention Back in 2013, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) introduced the concept of ‘Digital Reinvention’. Why is that concept noteworthy? Markets had evolved from organizational centricity, in which manufacturers and service providers defined a predictable state, into a radically different environment described as the everyone-to-everyone (E2E) economy. The E2E economy has four dist...

Are you open to new ideas, and given a compelling choice are you really prepared to change? That’s what informed CEOs are asking their C-suite leadership team. The context of those questions is about determining who is most qualified to guide the organization’s digital transformation journey. It’s also about setting expectations for C-level executives to partner. IT and business leaders must acknowledge that they’ve likely reached a significant turning point. Business technology advances are disrupting the legacy status quo and bringing huge market turmoil in their wake. Industries are converging, and unfamiliar competitors are surfacing. Granted, that convergence is creating opportunities for growth by shifting from products and services made by solo entities to new cross-sector customer experiences built via strategic partnerships. But it’s also intensifying market competition. One company’s convergence can become another’s encroachment. So, how do you navigate through this laby...

What's disruptive innovation, and why does it matter to leaders in the C-suite? It's how the savvy non-conformist will target market opportunities. How does this happen, when established companies seem to have the advantage? Creative software developers can quickly apply new technologies and digital business models to capture untapped demand. Moreover, the most disruptive new companies will eventually reshape entire industries, swiftly pushing aside the legacy incumbent players -- it's a form of Digital Darwinism. The Global Networked Economy will blossom, thanks to the pervasive Internet, while the adaptive entities will survive and prosper. Over the next five years, global digital transformation will continue to have a significant impact on the demands and requirements of Internet Protocol (IP) networks, according to key findings from the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI). Over the forecast period, global IP traffic is expected to increase three-fold rea...

Information technology (IT) advances are transforming the way we innovate in business, thereby disrupting the old guard and their predictable status-quo. It’s creating global market turbulence. Industries are converging, and new opportunities and threats are emerging, like never before. So, how are savvy chief information officers (CIOs) leading this transition? Back in 2015, the IBM Institute for Business Value conducted a market study that included the findings from over 1,800 CIO interviews from around the globe. The resulting insights are worthy of revisiting today, as we consider the digital business transformation outlook in 2017. Introduction to the Torchbearer CIO CIOs realize the barriers between formerly distinct industries are collapsing, as organizations in one sector apply their expertise to others – producing new hybrids and erasing prior traditional industry classifications in the process. They believe it's the most influential trend that's transformin...

Hybrid IT is a catalyst of progressive organizations. In fact, two-thirds of surveyed leaders say a blend of traditional and cloud infrastructure enables a strategic competitive advantage, according to a market study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights . That said, savvy leaders are using hybrid cloud to power their digital transformation agenda, going beyond cost reductions and productivity gains. They’re also using cloud as a foundation for next-generation initiatives -- such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cognitive Computing. New Insights into Emerging Cloud Trends According to findings from the latest Cisco Global Cloud Index (GCI), cloud service traffic is expected to rise 3.7-fold -- that’s up from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 -- to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020. The ongoing growth of cloud computing is being partly driven by the increased migration to hybrid cloud architectures that support the evolving demand for combining IT systems of record and systems of...

Some mainstream IT buyers might think that most cloud infrastructure vendors and service providers are essentially alike. But there are key differences. Besides, given the body of market research to the contrary, there’s clearly no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" cloud solution. Furthermore, if you believe that a hybrid cloud should support an IT agenda to transform a business, then a viable solution must consider the preexisting systems of record within the enterprise. That’s why forward-thinking CIOs often seek information and guidance on two fronts. First, they want to know how to extract costs from their legacy IT investments. Second, they desire to use that assessment exercise to free-up budget and fund innovation via a DevOps model that would streamline new cloud-native technology deployments. That’s why pragmatic CIOs understand the reality of a coexistence environment, where current on-premises IT systems must be an integral part of the total digital transf...

The world of business is changing. Disruptive shifts in power are forcing everyone to question the established status quo. In particular, savvy chief executives are tasking IT organizations to help create compelling customer experiences, support new business models and adopt agile operational processes. That's why the vast majority of IT and business leaders are joining forces on the organizations’ most pressing commercial needs and wants. They seek an open and flexible business technology foundation that's an enabler, rather than an inhibitor, to meaningful and substantive workflow progress. Forward-thinking executives believe cloud services can empower them to achieve their strategic business outcomes. Moreover, they want their whole leadership team to collaborate across the business, developing a comprehensive IT strategy that utilizes existing infrastructure investments and the elasticity of cloud services. Innovation: Opportunities vs Challenges Meanwhile, CIOs are...

Forging a viable business technology strategy for today’s Global Networked Economy is a high priority for most forward-thinking CEOs across the globe. Their guidance to CIOs is to create the fusion between existing IT infrastructure and modern cloud services. Moreover, the shift to a Hybrid IT model must support the organization’s key commercial expansion objectives. The savvy leaders who have a superior approach can extract greater value from their legacy IT investments, and launch new initiatives based upon public and private cloud computing services. This is the new normal -- CIOs must create the optimal blended environment for purposeful technology-enabled innovation. Primary Motivation A global study of 500 hybrid cloud decision makers revealed that organizations are increasingly integrating cloud computing and storage resources with traditional IT infrastructure to accommodate dynamic needs and specific business priorities, according to a market study by the IBM Center for...

While the decisive CEOs have a digital transformation agenda, those companies executing plans to re-imagine their business models are in the minority. And yet, the early-adopters now using cloud computing are enabled to respond quickly to changing market conditions. In contrast, the laggards are undecided and risk falling further behind. This is a global phenomena, where the industry and local market leaders are able to enact their transition with limited interference or threats from more traditional competitors. Just consider the current status-quo within the United Kingdom, as an example. The transformation of UK businesses is still relatively immature. Many organizations are aware of the potential of open hybrid cloud adoption, but they fail to actively address the technical debt that defines their legacy IT environment. Besides, they tend to narrowly focus on a small snapshot of the bigger picture. Clear Motivation to Overcome Inertia While some British leaders have progres...