IT leaders are asking themselves, What is the best way to adapt to the relentless pace of change?
Digital transformation is reshaping the industry worldwide. At the same time, new disruptive technologies are transforming business and IT operations. To successfully enable business growth in the rapidly advancing digital era, IT must evolve from being a reactive organization with limited agility to a predictive business enabler that anticipates and foresees business needs. The key to developing this capability is streamlining IT processes and working in the smartest way possible.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing has been steadily advancing in business, starting with applications specific to certain business units such as sales and marketing; then moving to file storage and office productivity suites, and later expanding to other areas, including IT departments.
Now, businesses can outsource entire parts of their infrastructure that traditional IT departments used to manage on-site, utilizing resources found in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions and similar technologies. This frees up the IT team to develop new core competencies and focus on higher-level strategic priorities.
Automation
IT is leveraging automation to streamline repetitive tasks in data centers and the cloud, eliminating the need for manual and labor-intensive interventions. Automation is especially beneficial when focused on memory-intensive activities that would otherwise consume the time of IT staff, such as provisioning new virtual machines or ensuring compliance with security policies.
The adoption of automation can accelerate the pace of IT operations and reduce instances of human errors, allowing administrators to spend more time on value-generating tasks, such as optimizing existing infrastructure or testing new technologies that could provide the company with a strategic advantage. Automation can offer IT teams timely and long-term support.
Artificial Intelligence
Although we are still in the early stages, it is clear that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a significant impact on both IT and business operations. Some companies are already starting to use AI to enhance their cybersecurity by leveraging the power of automated threat intelligence to quickly identify the most critical threats they face, threats that are emerging on an ever-growing scale. Instead of having to sift through a sea of alerts and choose the most urgent concerns, security professionals can spend more time strengthening their company’s defenses and improving its security posture.
IT and business leaders who successfully leverage the potential of cloud computing, automation, and artificial intelligence to advance their business processes will find themselves in a much better position to adapt to any changes demanded by our era of digital disruptions.
