What you need to know
In today’s digital landscape, cloud technology is a cornerstone of innovation. As organizations navigate their cloud journeys, they encounter both challenges and opportunities. Central to this journey is reinvention, which depends on a modern, cloud-powered digital core. The cloud provides essential compute power, storage and connectivity to integrate and scale data, AI and applications, helping businesses unlock significant value.
With a cloud-powered digital core, organizations gain advanced intelligence, efficiency and agility, enabling them to incorporate emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing. Enterprises adopting this reinvention strategy see a 10% increase in revenue growth, fostering ongoing innovation. However, many face hurdles such as resistance to change, skill gaps and integration complexities. Addressing these challenges is crucial for fully harnessing the cloud's transformative potential. To get started, here’s what’s trending:
Reinventing the digital core: A path to resilience
To thrive in a competitive landscape, organizations must focus on building a reinvention-ready digital core. This involves leveraging cloud technologies, data and AI to create a flexible and resilient foundation for growth. Research indicates that organizations prioritizing innovation allocate more than 30% of their IT budgets to emerging technologies. By balancing legacy systems with modern capabilities, businesses can foster agility and adaptability, ensuring they remain responsive to market changes and customer expectations. (What is Digital Core?)
50%
of executives believe that they can scale gen AI enterprise-wide in 6 to 12 months.
Bridging the gap of cost of ownership
Despite the widespread adoption of cloud solutions, many organizations struggle to fully realize their expected outcomes. A staggering 86% of executives believe that cloud is essential for their business, yet only 42% report achieving their anticipated benefits. This gap underscores the necessity for a strategic approach to cloud adoption that transcends mere migration. Leaders must focus on aligning their cloud strategies with business objectives to unlock the true potential of cloud technology. To succeed, organizations must adopt a proactive approach to infrastructure management.
Figure 1: Percentage of respondents who report that they have “fully achieved” their expected cloud outcomes, compared to previous reports.
Edge computing: The frontier of real-time data
Edge computing is transforming how organizations process and use data by bringing computation closer to the source. This shift enables real-time data processing, which reduces latency and enhances performance, especially for applications like IoT and smart devices. In fact, 81% of companies believe that failing to act quickly could prevent them from fully realizing the benefits of this technology. By embracing edge computing, businesses can respond more swiftly to customer needs and operational demands, cultivating a culture of innovation and agility.
83%
of global executives believe that edge computing will be essential to remaining competitive in the future.
Unlocking cloud data’s hidden treasures
Data is a critical asset in the cloud ecosystem, yet many organizations fail to harness its full potential. Alarmingly, less than 20% of companies effectively leverage their data for strategic advantage. To unlock the value of data, organizations must integrate their data sources and cultivate a data-driven culture that empowers employees to make informed decisions. Investing in advanced analytics and AI can further enhance insights, driving innovation and competitive differentiation.
1 in 5
companies excel at maximizing value from data
Modernization is the key to opportunity
There is a critical need for businesses to adopt a holistic "migrate to modernize" strategy to unlock the full potential of their cloud investments. Despite the accelerated shift to cloud platforms, many companies are not realizing the expected benefits such as increased agility, resilience, and cost savings. In fact, nearly 58% of organizations report experiencing a "cloud value gap," where the outcomes fall short of their expectations. By focusing on application transformation, businesses can bridge this gap and achieve next-level cloud outcomes.
Beyond uptime: The innovation imperative of infrastructure managed services
As businesses transition to hybrid cloud models, the emphasis shifts from simply maintaining uptime to fostering innovation through effective infrastructure management. In this rapidly evolving environment, traditional Infrastructure Managed Services (IMS) are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. The rate of change impacting businesses has increased by 183% since 2019, largely driven by technological advancements. To succeed, organizations must adopt a proactive approach to infrastructure management, using automation and strategic partnerships to boost operational efficiency. By leveraging these modern IMS strategies, companies can foster continuous reinvention, enhance customer service, and boost operational efficiency.
34%
of C-Suite executives consider legacy infrastructure a barrier to fully realizing cloud value
As organizations navigate the complexities of cloud technology, it becomes clear that embracing these trends is crucial for sustained growth and innovation. The digital core is central to this transformation, acting as the key technological capability that drives reinvention. By tackling the challenges of cloud adoption, leveraging edge computing, and fully harnessing data potential, businesses can lead their industries.
The digital core consists of three main components: digital platforms, data and AI, and the digital foundation, which includes four essential layers—cloud-first infrastructure, composable integration, security, and a continuum control plane. This journey to cloud transformation offers abundant opportunities for those ready to adapt and innovate, allowing organizations to engage with technologies in new and impactful ways.
Explore how your organization can harness the power of cloud and drive meaningful change.