Let’s face it, there’s an endless barrage of technology that continues to permeate our daily lives—from apps, to new cloud-based business models, to new financial models, and so on—everything has become digitized. And with that dependence on technology, the push for better, faster, more connected lives is what will drive IT infrastructure for the next decade, and beyond. In fact, the new socially led requirements surrounding Digital Transformation is about to tip most companies over, requiring not just a reimagining of service and product delivery models, but a full-blown breakdown and rebuild of business models in general. So where does one start?
Like any disruptive era in business, there are three main factors to consider: strategy, people, and technology. And though those can sometimes be represented as silos, they are in fact deeply and intrinsically connected.
As it pertains to business strategy, understanding what the ultimate customer experience is (or should be), will equip everyone with a roadmap on how to make the journey to Digital Transformation a successful one. However, when mapping out the end result, it’s imperative to account for the major technological component that must be implemented to meet the desired goals.
The same is true for the human element in all of this. Whether it’s the end-customer, or those who support the customer, people are the reason that companies are addressing Digital Transformation to begin with. From an improved and enhanced individualized customer experience, to the faster business processes that empower employees, ensuring that everything works as it should, is critical. Again, though simple in concept, technology will play a large role in making these things come to fruition.
So here we are on the technology topic yet again—the linchpin of Digital Transformation. As mentioned, whether it’s the strategy phase or determining the needs and desires of all involved, how things operate, where they reside, and what the business intelligence outcome will be is all heavily determined on building an IT infrastructure that will truly support the desired outcome.
From the ever-increasing amount of data created daily by social media, to the next generation of mobile connectivity, to processing demands placed on companies to support a thoroughly connected world, data centers are to be the next big target as it pertains to Digital Transformation. As infrastructure continues its staggering migration to the cloud, and as the demands of IT processing continue to outpace the ability to add new hardware into the mix, data centers become the heart of success or failure for companies.
Readying the data center with everything from the right optical networking capabilities to ensuring data flow, to the ability to grow the data center as demands dictate, takes a level of planning and expertise that—though adjacent to Digital Transformation—is its own beast of burden. And with everything from Artificial Intelligence, to machine learning, to big data and analytics, and more—data dictates the need for processing power and bandwidth to levels never seen before.
Having the right Digital Transformation partners to map out the strategy and adoption, paired with an IT infrastructure that supports goals now and in the future, will ensure success for years to come.