Digital transformation fuels upside market opportunities, and related growth goals are now the CEO's top business priority, according to the latest worldwide study by Gartner. Moreover, a growing number of CEOs will focus more on financial priorities - especially profitability improvement.

The annual survey of CEO and senior business executives in the fourth quarter of 2018 examined their business issues, as well as some areas of technology agenda impact. In total, 473 business leaders of companies...

In today’s complex business ecosystem, the relationship between the CIO and the CFO has to be closely aligned, which goes beyond just an agreement on the budget. The CIO and the CFO have to be as one, working together as two strong pillars that ensure the organisation meets every demand the regulators, shareholders, customers, partners and employees place on it. The days of tension between the CIO and CFO are long gone.

The pace of change from a traditional capital-intensive IT infrastructure model to a more flexible hybrid multi-cloud services model is influencing enterprise spending trends across the globe.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.79 trillion in 2019 -- that's an increase of just 1.1 percent from 2018, according to the latest global market study by Gartner.

IT infrastructure market development

"Currency headwinds fuelled by the...

Executive summary: Distributing giant Manutan moved from a reactive customer engagement strategy to a proactive approach through going cloud-native. While the process had various roadblocks, the sense of engagement and community was key. Xavier Laurent, director of value added services at Manutan, has ‘lived the journey of transformation’ over the past 10 years and discusses how the company meets customer demand in the digital...

The rate of cloud adoption has been nothing short of remarkable. According to IDG, 90% of organisations will have some portion of their applications or infrastructure running in the cloud this year, with the rest expected to follow suit by 2021. And while most organisations currently run more than half (53%) of their business on traditional networks,

As companies continue to bring more internal and external data sources and services together, the demand for digital connectivity is growing exponentially. 

The crucial connectivity layer, which lies at the heart of most transformation projects, is hugely important in facilitating this. Yet, as it exists below the surface, its significance often goes unappreciated by senior managers and, let’s be honest, due to its complexity it is often unloved by CTOs and lead architects too.

Many see the integration...

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m a huge fan of DevOps. It has been shown to increase quality, reduce problems, and shorten development cycles. It’s often considered a panacea for large organisations looking to transform their development, production and operational lifecycles. But is it right for every business? Companies that do it successfully can reap the benefits of continuous deployment and testing, but companies that fail get trapped in endless loops...

By Matt Piercy, VP and general manager, Zscaler EMEA

The business IT environment is changing rapidly and, as a result, today’s CIOs have to tackle a number of big challenges. 20 years ago, applications and data were stored on an individual’s computer. Today, cloud-delivered applications, services, and infrastructure are transforming business processes, services, and models.

As more enterprise CIOs and CTOs embrace hybrid multi-cloud deployment strategies, business technology vendors and cloud service providers must continue to evolve their go-to-market approach - in recognition of the prevailing IT infrastructure investment trends.

Vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, grew 47.2 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2018 (3Q18), reaching $16.8 billion, according to the latest worldwide...

As multi-clouds become the norm, finding and addressing wasteful cloud resources jump to the top of the list of IT concerns. Keeping cloud management simple, timely, and accurate requires a view into your application usage that is clear and comprehensive.

Hybrid clouds give organisations the ability to get the best of both worlds: on-premises for traditional apps and resources they want to keep...

As CIOs and CTOs shift their focus to digital transformation projects and the launch of new digital business offerings, demand for traditional IT services has evolved. Worldwide revenues for IT services and business services totaled $506 billion in the first half of 2018 (1H18) - that's an increase of 4 percent year over year, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

During 1H18, it was a mixed picture for tier-one global outsourcers and systems integrators...

The ubiquity of popular buzzwords or phrases in the technology community brings a certain kind of pressure. If everyone seems to be talking about the importance and transformative potential of an exciting new technology, then as a CIO it’s only natural to want to dive straight in and explore its potential use cases as soon as possible.

This is particularly true of businesses and edge computing. After all, edge...

IDC unveiled its top information and communications technology (ICT) predictions for Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) region. IDC now predicts that many more organisations will be 'digitally determined' by 2020, transforming commercial markets and reimagining their future growth potential.

Digitally determined organisations demonstrate the ability to vision, plan, and operationalise their digital transformation (DX) through ambition, grit, discipline and commitment. Ultimately, all digital...

Some IT organisations prefer infrastructure solutions that offer simplified cloud deployment models for their digital transformation projects. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.9 percent year-over-year to $3.5 billion during the second quarter of 2018 (2Q18).

"Data centre infrastructure convergence remains an important investment driver for companies around the world," said Sebastian Lagana, research...

A relatively small group of savvy executives have strategies in place to harness new business process automation technologies and thereby advance their digital transformation agenda. Meanwhile, a much larger group is closely following the market leaders, to explore their lessons-learned from pilot projects.

According to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research, new survey results suggest most organisations are adopting or considering artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) due to...

Many business leaders have a much better understanding of blockchain technology than just a couple of years ago. There's been a surge in R&D, both internally and in partnership with third parties, and a recognition that blockchain has the potential to be deployed in a variety of commercial use cases.

As the number of blockchain research projects increased, awareness among the pilot participants and elsewhere in their industries gained momentum. Now other companies are beginning to consider whether...

Becoming a digital business is very challenging because it demands new thinking, a willingness to evolve and bold ideas. As market leaders continue to embrace a digital transformation agenda, they're finding that the transition requires significant changes to organisational culture and internal systems.

A recent Gartner survey found that a relatively small number of organisations have been able to successfully scale their digital business initiatives beyond the experimentation and piloting stages.

"The reality is...

As more progressive business leaders choose to support mobile, team-oriented and non-routine ways of working, an increasing number of them are looking for assistance in adopting digital workplace technology. But why are they searching for actionable information and qualified guidance?

According to the findings from the latest Gartner survey, only 7 to 18 percent of organizations possess the 'digital dexterity' to adopt New Ways of Work (NWOW) solutions -- such as virtual collaboration and a mobile...

While there's less commentary about the challenges of "Shadow IT" projects within the enterprise market, the underlying issues that created this phenomena are still very apparent in the workplace. Bypassing the legacy IT organization is a common practice. It's now somewhat expected.

As many IT workers develop greater technology skills and apply them to advance their careers, savvy digital workers in non-IT departments believe their CIO is out of touch with their technology needs. Less than...

Across the globe, CEOs continue to promote business technology-enabled growth. Worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable digital transformation (DX) is forecast to be more than $1.1 trillion in 2018 - that's an increase of 16.8 percent over the $958 billion spent in 2017, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

DX spending will be led by the discrete and process manufacturing industries, which will not only spend the most on DX solutions but also...