Accelerate to subscription software with services that put you in control

Digital infrastructures need data-driven services

No matter what industry you’re in, you’re almost certainly feeling the pressure to transform to a digital business model that uses software-defined infrastructure. That’s nothing new. The real challenge is upping the pace of that change. You need to bring new products and services to market faster than ever before, because it’s about survival of the fittest. Smaller, more agile, more digitally savvy competitors are always snapping at your heels, your people have already adopted post-pandemic, hybrid ways of working, but your technology still needs to catch up.

To make this happen requires a focus on innovation. And this demands two basic ingredients: expertise and time. But if your experts are so busy keeping the lights on with routine tasks across multiple, complex environments, how can they be expected to drive technology innovation?

Many organizations are tackling this challenge by changing the way they consume technology. By switching from old capex-heavy technology strategies to more flexible opex-oriented models, they’re able to liberate their people and processes to focus on accelerating their transformation, rather than routine tasks.

This enables them to enhance the value from their existing business while creating a roadmap towards their vision of the future organization. And to modernize faster, they’re buying technology outcomes, not technology itself. We’ve witnessed how the pace at which organizations are moving to technology-as-a-service models has accelerated dramatically over the last few years. And to make this happen the focus has shifted dramatically toward technology lifecycle management.

It's about the outcomes, not the latest whiz-bang technology

Our clients put a lot of pressure on us to deliver measurable business outcomes through our services, not just flashy technical capabilities. And rightly so! In the past, it was acceptable for a technology services provider to simply implement technologies in a client’s environment and ensure it did what it said on the tin. This way of working is product-led and transactional, but now it's over for good. Traditional implementation, education and support service offerings are no longer good enough.

Organizations are looking to reduce operational complexity as they focus on achieving their key business outcomes.

Today, businesses are demanding services designed to reduce their operational complexity, accelerate the use of technical capabilities and, ultimately, deliver a quantifiable business impact. At the same time, their IT estates have become more and more complex as they’ve become more reliant on technology. It’s not an easy task to consistently manage a multi-vendor, multi-technology environment.

So, what organizations need is the right kind of help. They need the right expertise and insights at the right time to accelerate their success. To fix things before they break and support their IT more simply, reliably and securely. They also need analytics-driven real-time insights to act quickly and prevent problems, as well as the skills and resources to improve the productivity and effectiveness of their internal IT teams. They don’t just need support, they need a new operational support model designed for software-defined infrastructure, enabling the full value of new technology to be realized without adding management complexity.

Greater visibility, less complexity

One such organization’s environment we’ve helped to simplify and streamline is that of a a Japanese research-driven biopharmaceutical company. This business had just acquired a smaller company who themselves had merged with another organization 18 months before. If this sounds complicated, imagine the technology environment they had to deal with. The smaller acquired company had one strategic partner with a centralized services strategy, whereas there was regional autonomy on the acquiring company’s side.

The acquisition therefore resulted in multiple partners delivering against multiple support contracts. They also had very little visibility into the assets making up their IT estate. All this complexity was compounded by a lack of expertise, which greatly delayed their digital transformation. They needed a single partner with the capability to manage both software assets as well as associated and legacy hardware.

Through the deployment of our lifecycle services, we were able to deliver the visibility and control to ensure asset availability across their more than 7,000 devices. Our Digital Wallet optimized the license management for over 329,000 individual licenses. This allowed them to improve their compliance to a near-perfect 99% licence pool adherence, automate provisioning and remediation though data-driven insights and provide a simpler, more efficient user experience.

Stepping on the gas in digital transformation

For an Asian oil and gas company, it was much the same picture. They needed to push boundaries, be more agile, outfox disruptors and – ultimately – add value to their products and services by accelerating their digital transformation. What kept them from these ambitious goals was, again, the complexity and sprawl of their IT software environment.

By leveraging the single view enabled by the Digital Wallet our client was able to gain the data-driven insight to optimize the lifecycle management of 251,000 licenses, improving license pool compliance to 96%. By repurposing 76 unused licensing pools, adoption was increased ensuring efficient utilization and cost control. And – last but not least – the organization enjoyed unprecedented visibility and control though the unified digital experience provided by our Digital Services Platform.

The conclusion is a simple truth: to accelerate digital transformation it’s essential to have the data you need whenever you need it. With the right combination of insight and experience, you’re in control with the tools to simplify decision-making and accelerate time to value.

Read more about Software-defined Infrastructure Services.