IT Leaders Must Embrace Digital Transformation

Across industries around the world, digital transformation (DX) is changing the way organisations of all sizes do business. Harnessing the power of the 3rd Platform (cloud, mobility, social business, and big data and analytics), organisations leverage new digital competencies to transform every step of the value chain. This leads to the creation of new revenue streams, the elimination of inefficient and redundant processes, and a shift away from repetitive day-to-day tasks to more strategic, future-looking work. For organisations to remain competitive in this quickly unfolding digital era and beyond, IT must embrace digital transformation and the requisite infrastructure needed to achieve it.

The Network Is A Key Enabler Of Digital Transformation

Outdated infrastructure characteristics such as manual configuration and management processes, overlay security geared mainly toward external threats and siloed network domains hinder the network’s ability to further the goals of digital business. For IT staff, valuable time is spent “keeping the lights on” instead of aligning network capabilities with strategic initiatives that improve operational efficiency and enhance the customer experience. A network that is truly digital ready is a network that can dynamically align with the ever-changing needs of the enterprise. That means a network that allows more agility and faster time to innovation, better security, and greater operational efficiency and simplicity.

IT Leaders Should Map Out Their Journey To A Digital-Ready Network

Cisco worked with IDC to develop a five-stage Digital Network Readiness Model (www.cisco.com/go/dnaadvisor) to help organisations envision a clearer path to a network that can support all their digital aspirations. With the emergence of technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN), programmable open interfaces, virtualisation, cloud, and analytics, the model provides a framework to start from. It also enables organisations to gain visibility into the opportunities and benefits associated with evolving from one stage to the next. IDC surveyed 2,054 global respondents to establish current rates of network readiness across five core digital network categories. In addition, IDC interviewed 25 organisations to learn how adoption of more advanced network capabilities is driving business benefits. These benefits include cost savings, productivity increases, and reduced time to new business initiatives in a dynamically secure environment.

Digital-Ready Networks Yield Benefits

  • Only one in five organisations has aligned its network strategies with its DX strategies today. However, organisations with highly aligned strategies have more than double the rate of revenue growth, customer retention, and profit growth relative to companies with only partial or no alignment.
  • Organisations at more advanced stages of network readiness perform significantly better on each of these same key business metrics than organisations with less advanced networks.
  • Organisations around the world have strong ambitions to adopt more mature, automated, and self-driving network capabilities over the next two years. In fact, 45% of large and midsize organisations worldwide plan to achieve advanced network readiness within two years — just over three times current network readiness levels.
  • Organisations with more mature networks are deploying almost twice as many digital capabilities as those with less mature networks.
  • Organisations are able to improve their security and risk mitigation with digital-ready networks, resulting in significant revenue growth and cost reductions. *
  • On average, IDC’s research shows that interviewed organisations have been able to translate their digital network initiatives into significant financial value.

To learn more download the full pdf from Cisco on Network Ready Digital Transformation, additionally view the info-graphic below

Is Your Network Ready for the demands of the digital era? Ciisco