BEYOND “IT” – OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CHANNEL

BEYOND “IT” – OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE
CHANNEL
HELPING YOUR BUSINESS CUSTOMERS IMPROVE THEIR AGILITY
JIM BURNS – TALKTALK BUSINESS
IAN WATT - OVUM

Agenda Today
• The Research findings
• The importance of “Technology
Agility” in today’s environment
• Agility Opportunities

Agility
Responsive to change; primed for
opportunity; and resolute against risk.

www.ovum.com
© Copyright Ovum. All rights reserved. Ovum is part of Informa Group.
Enterprise and SME views on
ICT agility

5© Copyright Ovum. All rights reserved. Ovum is part of Informa Group.
Research sample – larger companies
 The larger company sample comprised 235 companies with 200+ employees, half of which had
2000+ employees
 Respondents were IT and other senior decision-makers with ICT purchase influence
 Almost two-thirds of respondents were in ICT roles

Research sample – smaller companies
 The smaller company sample comprised 310 companies with 10-200 employees, half of which had
50+ employees
 Respondents were IT and other senior decision-makers with ICT purchase influence
 Almost half of respondents were in ICT roles

LARGER COMPANIES

A majority of respondents feel their organisation’s approach to agility is
suboptimal
How would you describe
your organisation's
approach to agility?
 Roughly a third of respondents felt their organisation struck the right balance on agility.
 However, over 40% felt their organisation to be held back by the ICT technology currently used
 A further 10% felt their organisation overlooked agility completely
 10% felt their company’s ICT solution was over-engineered for agility, with a range of options rarely
or never used

Legacy systems coupled with budget constraints are seen as the main
obstacles to agility
Which of the following
factors do you believe
currently restrains your
organisation from
becoming more agile?
 About a third of respondents regarded the main barriers to agility as budget/value issues and over-
reliance on legacy systems resulting from under-investment
 This view was particularly strong among IT decision makers in the largest companies
 Skills gaps, lack of coordination between different departments, and compliance issues were also
seen as significant barriers

A majority of respondents are dissatisfied with the speed of their
organisation’s responsiveness
How satisfied are you with the
'rhythm of change' and the time
needed by IT to turn 'request to
results' within your
organisation?
 There was a significant level of dissatisfaction with the organisations’ responsiveness (request
to response time), with over two-thirds of respondents only somewhat satisfied or worse
 Dissatisfaction was stronger in the largest companies

Most respondents believe that allowing employees to contribute to
strategic IT decisions is good for agility
'A business that
empowers its employees
to provide input into
strategic IT decisions can
be more agile than one
that doesn't.'
 The vast majority (90%) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that broadening ICT decision-
making to ‘front line’ roles could result in a more agile business
 Although this view was most strongly held by non-IT respondents, it was also widely held even by IT
decision-makers
 Almost two-thirds of respondents felt that control should still be retained by the CIO

Increased commitment of senior management and simplicity are seen as
the main game changers for agility
The biggest game
changer to your
organisation's ICT agility
agenda would be...
 Among the largest companies, about a third of respondents in the largest companies regarded
increased commitment to ICT agility among senior management as most important in increasing
ICT agility
 Among other large companies, the emphasis was more on encouraging decision makers to embrace
the ''less is more'' school of thought

Managed services providers and systems integrators are seen as well-
placed to support agility
Which type of ICT
provider/partner/supplier/vendor do
you believe can best support your
overall agility strategy?
 About a quarter of respondents saw managed IT service providers as being best placed to
support companies’ overall agility strategy, with systems integrators also seen as well-placed
 Inevitably, in-house IT departments were seen as well-placed, particularly amongst IT decision
makers
 Few respondents saw telcos as best placed – this probably refers primarily to the incumbent telco
i.e. BT

In terms of restraints to agility, retailers tend to be more concerned
about budgets; financial institutions more about compliance
Which of the following factors do you
believe currently restrains your
organisation from becoming more
agile?
 Over 40% of respondents from large retailers were concerned about the impact of under-investment
and/or the perception that IT departments deliver under par systems and applications
 Almost a third of respondents from large financials believed compliance (defined as security,
business continuity, regulatory and related concerns) were too big an obstacle for their business to
be agile

Dissatisfaction with the ‘rhythm of change’ is highest amongst financials
How satisfied are you with the 'rhythm of
change' and the time needed by IT to turn
'request to results' within your organisation?
 40% of respondents working for large financials were either dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with
the time needed by IT to turn 'request to results’

Operating stability is most important among financials
Maintaining operating stability is our
biggest priority.
 Over half of respondents working for larger financials ranked ‘maintaining operating stability’ as
the most important aspect of the core ICT network

SMALLER COMPANIES

Almost two-thirds of SME respondents regard ICT agility as common
sense/sound management practice
What does ICT agility
mean to you?
 62% of smaller company respondents believed ICT agility to represent sound business management
 13% regarded ICT agility as a key source of competitive advantage
 12% regarded ICT agility as representing investment underpinning the long-term validity of the
business

Half of respondents feel their organisation’s approach to agility is sub-
optimal
How would you describe
your organisation's
approach to agility?
 Roughly half of respondents felt their organisation struck the right balance on agility
 But about a third felt their organisation was held back by the ICT technology currently used
 A further 14% felt their organisation overlooked agility completely
 6% felt their company’s ICT solution was over-engineered for agility, with a range of options rarely or
never used

Legacy systems coupled with budget constraints are seen as the main
obstacles to agility
What restricts you most in
moving towards
becoming more agile from
a technology
perspective?
 Almost half of respondents regarded the main barriers to agility as legacy technology resulting from
cost constraints
 This view was particularly strong among smaller companies
 Poor IT literacy and lack of affordable choices were also seen as significant barriers particularly
among smaller companies

Affordable technology is seen as the main game changer for agility,
particularly among smaller companies
The biggest game
changer to your
organisation's ICT agility
agenda would be...
 Among smaller companies, about half of respondents regarded affordability as most important in
increasing ICT agility
 Among medium-sized companies, affordability was seen as most important by over a third of
respondents
 This supports the hypothesis that SMEs are only as agile as their technology choices allow them to
be

A majority of respondents agree that SMEs have to choose between
paying too much and receiving too little
'Small and medium-sized businesses are limited to
two choices:
Use costly and complex enterprise-grade solutions
or affordable but feature-light consumer-grade
technology. There is very little in-between.’
 Almost two-thirds of respondents agreed that SMEs are limited to two choices: using costly and
complex enterprise-grade solutions or affordable but feature-light consumer-grade technology.

Agility and the SME
A rock and a hard place
Beta state of mind
Less is more

Agility and the Corporate/Enterprise
Less is more
Agility with an anchor
“C” Suite buy-in
Outside In, Inside Out

Being Agile allows
you to cope with
change !

84.4%
GROWTH IN MOBILE
TRAFFIC
YEAR ON YEAR
1/3 OF TRAFFIC
Now VIDEO
44x
GROWTH IN NETWORK
TRAFFIC IN NEXT 10 YEARS

Bandwidth Growth Sept 2012 – Sep 2013
Average traffic Sept 2012 385Gb Sep 2013 850Gb – 120% increase
Peak Traffic Sept 2012 415Gb Sep 2013 950Gb – 130% increase
Total network traffic on TalkTalk Next Generation Network
400
200
800
600

Performance
82% have experienced network
outages that have had an impact on
business
Business Continuity
64% have experienced
some form of disruption/compromise
due to bandwidth restrictions
Security & Mobility
53% say their networks either don’t
permit or don’t support BYOD
Monitoring & Maintenance
64% feel they can easily make
changes to their network where
needed
Check out http://www.talktalkbusiness.co.uk/solutions/network/

5 Technology Agility
Opportunities?

Tip 5 : Understand their long term strategy
Key considerations:
How far out does their strategy go?
How will their network underpin their future needs ?
BYOD
Collaboration
Flexible Working
Wi-Fi
On-Line
Mobile

Tip 4 : Speed Up their Internet
Key considerations
How dependent are they on the internet & online?
What will they & their own customers use it for in the future?

Tip 3 : Get them hosted
Key considerations
Which applications will be improved in the cloud?
How do you build the business case to make the move?
What about the connectivity to support?

Tip 2 : SIP their voice
Key considerations
What are their voice requirements now and in the future?
How can SIP support more flexibility and cost savings in their business?

Tip 1 : Position yourself as the right supplier
and review their network ongoing
Key consideration:
How do you make yourself the right supplier?

And of course, a bit about
TalkTalk Business

50 x Capacity increase
500,000+ B2B Broadband lines
16,000+ Ethernet lines
3 Billion+ mins/m VoIP

37
Next
generation
networking
Data
connectivity
Voice
convergence
Data, media
& service
hosting

BEYOND “IT” – OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CHANNEL

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Editor's Notes