Dubai: Mohammad Ameen, Senior Vice-President and Regional Manager for Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle East at EMC Corporation, told Gulf News that 70 per cent of the IT budget goes to keep the lights on and 30 per cent for innovation and new services.
By implementing the next-generation technologies (also called third platform) — mobile, social, cloud and big data — IT budgets can be cut down to 50 per cent and the remaining 50 per cent can be invested on innovation.
According to a survey conducted by EMC, 88 per cent of respondents expect these trends to give their organisations a competitive advantage while 79 per cent see IT as a strategic business driver, more than ever before.
Ameen said that everybody will eventually move to third platform. Think about the internet 15 years ago, people said that it was for the enterprise and businesses but now everybody is using it and the same will imply to the third platform.
He said the impact of third platform has fundamentally changed the expectations of consumers and end users who increasingly want to interact online, anytime and from anywhere, making IT more strategically important than ever before. IT has been focused on creating efficiencies and driving down cost.
Survey shows that 79 per cent of companies see IT as a business enabler, yet 64 per cent believe that spending for technology was outside of IT’s control — indicating there is still work for IT to do in gaining trust from decision makers.
Working together, Jyoti Lalchandani, vice-president and regional managing director at research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), said the third-platform solutions drive optimal IT performance by enhancing system availability, increasing asset utilisation, enabling connectivity, optimising applications portfolios, and facilitating a more mobile workforce, so the attraction is there for all to see.
The survey said that 86 per cent agree that their organisation sees the increasing role of automation — such as software defined storage — as crucial to business growth.
“By putting the four elements together, they are allowing businesses to do things differently and allowing new types of applications to do business,” said Jonathan Martin, chief marketing officer of information infrastructure at EMC.
He said that organisations that are able to make that change (reduce the investment they make) and accelerate the growth are able to take advantage of the third platform.
