Just as IT respondents recognize the negative impact of IT complexity on business, they listed business goals first when asked about their goals to simplify IT(see Figure 2, “IT Simplifications Goals”). Each of the top four responses clearly reflects priorities important to any organization, including increasing revenues and profits, delivering new products to market faster, and providing better experiences for employees and customers.
Although business goals comes first, some simplification goals naturally reflect more IT-centric concerns.Among them are the hope that simplification will result in “more accurate justification/ROI calculation for techology solutions” and “better use of cloud and mobile technologies.” All of this mirrors the ongoing pressure IT is udner to reduce costs and prove the business benefits of IT spending.
On a hopeful note, survey results show that many simplification efforts are already paying off. Close to six in 10 respondents reported system consolidation has reduced costs, with a similar number reporting success with other simplifciation efforts, including the use of a common data model and hybrid cloud/on-premises deployments. Skillfully managing the infrastructure required to deliver speedy business analytics and other services also reduces harmful complexity while meeting business needs to control costs.
HOW TO REDUCE IT COMPLEXITY
Perhaps not surprising from an IT point of view, limitations of technology is a major cause of excessive complexity. However, technology also holds hope for a cure. The key enablers for IT simplification-cited by about eight out of ten respondents-include the abililty to easily integrate and consolidate systems and to better connect people, devices and business networks in real time. An equal number of respondents give high priority to simplification efforts aimed at reducing data footprints, replacing batch processing with real-time processing and deploying applications better tailored to the needs of the business.