FD Insights Issue 6 | Page 74

IT’s a race for change: VMware research
reveals five month gap between business
demands and IT delivery
Misalignment within businesses hampers innovation,
productivity and competitive edge

Mware, Inc. the global leader in virtualization
and cloud infrastructure, has announced research revealing that almost two thirds (65%)
of IT decision makers in Europe, Middle East &
Africa (EMEA) believe an average time lapse
of five months exists between what the business wants
and when IT can deliver it.

V

This misalignment between business and IT carries significant ramifications for the performance, competitiveness
and growth prospects of organisations. The reduced likelihood of innovation across all departments (39%), reduced
staff productivity (36%) and loss of customers to more
agile competitors (33%) were cited by IT decision makers
as the implications of the gap.
As companies grapple with the new era of IT, this gap
adds to the growing pressure IT is under. The research
by Vanson Bourne, commissioned by VMware*, finds that
69% of IT decision makers feel their department is under
pressure from the CEO, CTO or board to modernise IT
in the next 12 months. Beyond the ongoing challenge of
reducing the cost of IT (50%), these departments specifically have been tasked with increasing the mobility of the
workforce (43%) and moving more infrastructure to the
cloud (40%).
“A lag of almost half a year between what the business
expects of IT and what it can deliver is huge. We cannot
underplay the pressure IT departments face in this new
mobile cloud era, as they balance a need to maximise
value from existing systems alongside the necessity to

deploy new
technologies,”
says Wayne
Biehn, regional
manager Africa:
West, East,
Central, South
(WECA) Africa.
“We’re hearing
time and again
that businesses see IT as a
Wayne Biehn, Regional Manager Africa:
driver of innovaWest, East, Central, South (WECA) Africa
tion; it has to be
part of future not
part of the furniture. Organisations of all sizes need an IT
infrastructure that can scale up and down with business
demand, increase automation to reduce management burden and help improve productivity and support innovation.
Investment needs to shift to IT that can genuinely impact
the business and reduce the gap.”
The pressure surrounding IT delivery is a challenge felt
by many enterprises. The research found that one in
two (55%) of IT decision makers recognise that smaller
competitors can more rapidly implement modern IT and
therefore react quicker to market changes. As a result,
nearly three quarters (73%) of these respondents felt
either concerned or threatened by smaller businesses.
According to Angus Gregory, CEO, Biomni: “With the pace

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel [phone] Fax [phone] www.vmware.com
Copyright © 2013 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed
at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be
trademarks of their respective companies.

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