What comes to mind when you hear the words – Digital Transformation? Most people think about websites, moving to the cloud, increased online activity, working from home, and productivity from anywhere. But many times, when we conceptualize digital transformation, we only think about the ‘sexy’ or ‘visible’ side of it. There is another side of digital transformation that is seldom spoken about.
The side that I am referring to is the infrastructure side, which we seldom see or even consider. The thing is, this is the side that often is responsible for holding or in some cases connecting all the top-level components together. Let me explain…
Consider the following example
An organization that has existed for 10 years. They have already established themselves and have a solid reputation for excellent customer service and solid products. This organization has over sixty (60) employees and three (3) offices. Pre-Pandemic their traditional business model required customers to visit their establishment. The extent to which they were computerized was average. With electronic systems in place to perform their core business tasks and store the necessary data, etc. Management understood that change was required a few months into the pandemic and at the start of lockdown. They knew that to survive, they needed to continue serving their customers. A typical story in these times…
Like many other organizations faced with this situation, they embarked on a project to equip the company with the necessary technology. In other words, they embarked on a Digital Transformation project. Fast forward a few months and the solution implemented was a combination of cloud and on-premise technologies. They replaced 40% of their desktops with laptops to support user mobility and remote work, and they standardized on Microsoft Teams for corporate voice and video communications.
Their business processes were optimized to support new strategies for remote work and other services. They were ready to work and keep the business going regardless of their location. 3 months later, and the resident IT Team was bombarded with calls and trouble tickets. You guessed it! The focus thus far was on building a new platform. No one considered the foundation of the existing platform and whether or not it could sustain the new technology. The problems experienced, to name a few, were:
- Slow performance on VPN
- Slow access to the Internet while working from home
- Security concerns due to the organisations data now being outside of the confines of the traditional walls
- Increase in malware due to the increase in mobile devices and the lack of management
- Slow and inconsistent performance when connecting to cloud application platform
- The IT Team had to manage more platforms that delivered different aspects of the solution. This took a toll on the existing resources.
- Overall degradation in customer service. Since the underlying infrastructure components were not optimized to handle the new mode of business.
The other side of digital transformation
The above scenario is more typical than you may think. All of the above issues can be properly addressed by considering the necessary infrastructure components. The side of digital transformation that is seldom spoken about. The following questions need to be asked:
- What are we working with now?
- What are the infrastructure requirements to support the proposed system?
- Can the existing infrastructure support the proposed solution?
- What is our plan for securing and managing these new mobile devices (laptops)
- What do we need to securely and consistently connect to the new cloud environment?
- How do we support the connectivity of these laptops when we get back into the office?
- How do we efficiently and securely connect the two (2) Branches?
And the list can go on and on… The above questions will all spark a conversation around some sort of infrastructure component. You need to consider the other side…
This is exactly what we will be sharing with you in our upcoming virtual event– Infrastructure Solutions – Enabling the Transformation on June 25th from 9 am to 12 noon. We want to ensure that you clearly understand that the underlying conduit that is responsible for securely passing that digitised traffic and securely connecting your users, all play a critical role in the final solution; that is the fully transformed business. This area and all the infrastructure technologies are often overlooked. Because they are normally not the frontline or, as we say, “the sexy stuff.”
There are any benefits to attending this event
Participants will leave with:
- An Understanding of the digitization process from end to end from an infrastructure perspective
- Cost-saving strategies that focus on the underlying infrastructure and not only the front end
- 3-5 ways to make this transition in your business in the next 90 days
Registration for the event is open
