In case you didn’t get enough data from the last blog on trends in networking or your curiosity is piqued, here is our next blog that reviews more survey data.
The recent ALE-commissioned survey found that digital transformation is taking hold, companies want more manageability and they are looking for new network infrastructure partners that understand it. In fact, 100 percent of respondents said that they are, or will be potentially, looking for a new provider soon.
You may have read in a previous blog post that Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) commissioned emedia, who are a part of the publishing group Ziff Davis, to conduct a survey of IT decision makers in education, hospitals and healthcare, hospitality and cruise and transportation sectors.
Who replied to the survey?
The survey, completed in late 2017, included responses from companies with between 150 – 2499 employees from Australia, France, Germany, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
In the first blog post in this two-part series, we looked at the biggest challenges IT decision makers were facing with their current networking providers. According to the survey, the major challenges were security and manageability, which was no surprise given the growth of the cloud and internet of things (IoT).
Which trends do you foresee disrupting your business?
The survey also asked IT decision makers “Which trends do you foresee disrupting your business in the near future?” with possible answers including digital collaboration, digital transformation, IoT, mobility and new business models.
25 percent of survey respondents believe digital transformation is the top trend that that would soon disrupt their business landscape. Close behind digital transformation with 24 percent of responses, was new business models, meaning that the unpredictable nature of disruptive cloud technologies was an obvious cause for concern, with businesses such as Uber demonstrating the destabilizing effects that new tech can have on established markets. Digital collaboration represented 21 percent of responses with IoT representing 16 percent and mobility representing 14 percent. You can view the infographic that summarizes the full survey results here.
Mobility
Although mobility was not the most disruptive technology in the survey, it is disruptive when you consider it is no longer just about wireless handsets and cell phones. It is also about mobile access and security, it’s about student tablets in classrooms, intelligent traffic systems on highways and wearable patient monitors in hospitals. Companies are rethinking the very foundation of their network to incorporate these new demands from mobility – network security, network performance and support of pioneering new devices.
Digital Transformation disrupts
Even less surprising was that digital transformation led the survey responses. We already know that digital transformation is a hot topic as industry analyst firm IDC predicts that digital transformation could generate as much as $18 trillion (US) in additional business value for companies worldwide.
Digital transformation is about using technology to improve the connected customer experience, increase employee efficiency and accelerate decision making to experience collaboration at previously unknown levels. Given the efficiency and cost reduction digital transformation can bring to an enterprise, companies are actively rethinking the digital tools they use and how they use them.
Four steps to developing a digital transformation strategy
At ALE, a four-step strategy was developed to help customers transition to the digital world.
1. Connect everything – IoT will make huge demands on your enterprise network
2. Deploy analytics to automate, understand and save costs
3. Offer new business models that take advantage of the costs savings cloud and other “as-a-service” models offer
4. Move towards a single, simple platform for your communications infrastructure
What are you doing?
What are the greatest benefits that a new digital strategy could deliver to your business – and your users? How is your company experiencing digital transformation and what tools are you turning to for collaboration and efficiency? Let us know in the comments below.
Vicki Vaughn
Web content managerVicki has over 25 years of telecom industry experience as a writer and editor of marketing materials for various channels.
Currently in the Central Marketing group of ALE, Vicki is a web content manager where she ensures the quality and general content of the public website. Her previous telecom industry roles include writing and editing technical and marketing materials, PR, IR and has supported ALE patent efforts as a U.S. patent agent.
Prior to telecom, she worked several years as a product manager for a software engineering company and prior to that as a CAD/CAM software programmer. Recently, she became a Registered Patent Agent with the USPTO. Prior to that accreditation, she earned a J.D. in Law from Abraham Lincoln University, an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California with an emphasis on brand marketing and a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.
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