Getting a handle on an organization’s current digital infrastructure resiliency readiness can be a daunting task. Leaders need to consider whether the organization has prioritized five key attributes.
All the five main attributes discussed in our last blog post on infrastructure resiliency—digital infrastructure contributions to business outcomes; resiliency readiness; consistent and prescriptive governance; improving autonomous operations and prioritizing automation; and ubiquitous deployment of cloud-native platforms and services—are areas organizations need to improve on in their quest to attain the highest level of maturity with infrastructure resilience.
Many enterprises are likely already well along in developing these areas. For example, over the past few years there has been a big shift toward cloud-based services and cloud-native platforms. The pandemic has accelerated this move, as organizations looked for more efficient ways to deliver services to employees and customers given the new limitations and requirements.
There is always room for improvement, however. For instance, companies could more effectively integrate public cloud services with private clouds and traditional, on-premises systems. They could make better use of edge computing platforms in bringing processing and data analytics closer to the endpoint or the customer.
Many organizations need to be more adept at using AI, ML, and automation in general. And certainly, a lot of companies need to enhance their governance, compliance, and cyber security programs to meet the constantly changing risks.
Indeed, IDC research shows that few organizations in the U.S. (7%) had reached the leader maturity level as of 2021. In contrast, more were pacesetters (26%), progressives (48%) and latecomers (19%).
Those organizations that had attained the leader maturity level demonstrated significantly higher improvement in annual business outcomes, according to IDC. For instance, leaders had 119% improvement in revenue as a result of investments in digital infrastructure resiliency. They had 107% improvement in faster time to market, 63% improvement in operational efficiency, 13% improvement in employee productivity and 11% improvement in cost savings.
Leaders, not surprisingly, also showed a much higher level of proven preparedness for their digital infrastructure’s ability to deal with unexpected situations, compared with those less mature from a resiliency standpoint.
Given the current business environment and the growing sense of urgency to become truly digital businesses, many organizations should be aiming to move up to the highest level of digital maturity.
