How successful IT leaders approach IT agility and ability to scale

These changes require organizations to innovate, change, and respond quickly to survive and thrive. This means IT must also deliver promptly and change quickly so the business can move faster than it previously did to achieve agility. Speed has become crucial to take advantage of new opportunities before they disappear. Flexibility to increase, decrease, or cease efforts and expenses based on the most recent data and circumstances has also become equally important.

These new business demands challenge the traditionally longer IT lifecycles for investment, procurement, development, deployment, data center, and hardware refreshes. The traditional IT model no longer works when the business requires quicker delivery and faster responses. A flexible development process is crucial for organizations to adapt their IT systems and offerings quickly in response to changing market demands.

To meet business demands today, IT organizations must act with agility—the ability to act quickly and deliver new services promptly; and scalability—the ability to increase or decrease capabilities efficiently as the business requires. IT organizations are responding with multiple approaches, including decreasing on-premise, owned data centers, hardware purchasing, and unnecessary software development, increasing third-party contracted services, SaaS subscriptions, cloud subscriptions and services, DevOps, modernization, and contracts that have built-in flexibility for quickly scaling to meet fast-changing business needs.

Understanding IT agility and business value

IT agility is the cornerstone of a modern, responsive organization. It refers to the ability to swiftly adapt to changing business needs and market conditions. This agility is achieved by having the right systems, personnel, and tools in place to respond to new opportunities and challenges effectively. Achieving IT agility is not just a technical necessity but a strategic imperative for creating business value. By leveraging emerging technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT), organizations can enhance their agility and responsiveness to customer needs.

Business agility is intrinsically linked to IT agility. It requires the ability to quickly adapt to evolving market conditions and customer demands. Cultivating a culture of agility within the organization is essential for improving responsiveness and creating business value. This involves adopting agile software development methodologies and utilizing tools such as DevOps and continuous integration. These practices enable organizations to streamline their development processes, respond to customer feedback more effectively, and deliver high-quality products and services faster.

How to address three common challenges around achieving agility and scalability

“I need agile IT solutions to quickly and seamlessly meet new business requirements.”

IT leaders rely on the agility of their deployments, utilizing agile methodology, to meet new business needs quickly and seamlessly. The speed and ease with which an organization can react to new demands are critical to success. Additional technology features, such as virtual assistants and social media ordering, can enhance customer experience and keep companies competitive. Hybrid IT strategies that can connect data center space, cloud resources, and hyper-scale on-ramps allow companies to quickly create and integrate new services and tools or move workloads with flexing business requirements. Connectivity also supports this agility, enabling organizations to connect core data centers, edge deployments, and clouds.

“I need to scale resources up and down to keep pace with rapidly changing demand.”

IT leaders need the ability to quickly and efficiently scale IT resources, corresponding infrastructure, and data center footprints to address continually evolving business needs. You must utilize data centers, cloud resources, and connectivity options for seamless scalability. In addition, it’s important to work with a provider that allows you to reallocate contracted dollars between its products and services to protect your IT investments as you adapt your IT solutions.

“Our infrastructure is aging and requires significant investments. How do I optimize short-term costs and limit long-term investments?”

Infrastructure ages, requiring IT leaders to invest in new data center equipment. Many are moving away from an owned infrastructure model in favor of an OpEx strategy. It is possible to avoid costly capital expenditures and long-term commitments while modernizing your IT infrastructure. With outsourced hybrid IT solutions, you can achieve the security, performance, and data protection your organization needs across various workloads and connections with predictable costs and flexible contract terms. Work with a provider that has a professional services team that offers experience and expertise to help your IT organization architect and transform into a cost-effective, modern IT landscape, considering the impact of organizational structure on system design and agility.

FlexAnywhere solutions for complex hybrid IT environments

The rapid-fire pace of business requires companies to quickly pivot and scale to address changing business landscapes and end-user demands. Flexential provides organizations with the ability to adapt and respond in an agile, real-time manner. Automotive app integration can be seamlessly incorporated into existing technology platforms to enhance customer experience. Natural language processing plays a crucial role in enhancing efficiency, reducing complexity, and minimizing human error. FlexAnywhere® Solutions provides best practices for accelerating the deployment of hybrid IT solutions, improving availability, infrastructure performance, and interconnection reliability to public clouds, partners, and customers.

Measuring success in IT agility

Measuring success in IT agility involves a blend of metrics that evaluate the speed, quality, and business value of IT services. Key metrics to consider include:

• Time-to-market: This metric measures the duration required to develop and deploy new software applications and features. A shorter time-to-market indicates higher agility.
• Customer satisfaction: Gauging customer satisfaction with IT services and applications provides insights into how well the IT organization meets user needs and expectations.
• Defect density: This metric assesses the quality of software development by measuring the number of defects per unit of code. Lower defect density signifies higher quality.
• Mean time to recovery (MTTR): MTTR measures the time taken to recover from IT service outages and disruptions. A lower MTTR reflects a more resilient and agile IT infrastructure.
• Business value: Evaluating the business value of IT services and applications involves metrics such as revenue growth, cost savings, and improved customer satisfaction. These indicators help quantify the impact of IT agility on overall business performance.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain a comprehensive understanding of their IT agility and identify areas for improvement. This continuous assessment ensures that IT services not only meet current business needs but also contribute to long-term business success.

Flexential can help you solve your challenges around agility and the ability to scale your IT solutions here.