While investment in information technology has increased, productivity growth has slowed since the 1990s according to U.S. government data. This "productivity gap" is estimated to cost $2.7 trillion annually and is caused by older infrastructure struggling to handle newer mobile and cloud technologies, and over half of IT spending going to operations and maintenance rather than innovation. Closing the gap requires focusing spending on the "technology frontier" of innovative firms that are 3-4% more productive, and streamlining the use of technologies like cloud, mobile, and data management to improve business metrics and competitiveness.

1. 2006
Amazon
web services
launched
6
1990
2000
2010
.2%
1.2%
1
2.6%
1991
World
wide web
debuts
1997
Wifi
1998
Google
THE
GAP
GROWING
Productivity growth has slowed
down despite our rising
investment in IT
What is it?
4
6
5
5
Complexity 55-72% of IT
spend is operations & mainterance
Acceleration of security attacks
40% increase in recent years
Acceleration of data doubling
its size every 2 years
By 2020, the digital universe
will be 44 zettabytes
Old infrastructure
mobile & cloud
technology is
bolted onto
30-year-old
systems
Causes
How to close it
Estimated $2.7 trillionAnnual cost
IT spend
at 11%
3
2007
iPhone
debuts
$1.4 million
units
2015
IT spend
at 5.5%
2
iPhone
sales
$231
million
units
Greater focus at the “Technology Frontier”
Frontier firms apply innovative technologies to business
solutions – so workers can becomemore productive
The productivity growth of the frontier firms is now 3-4% more
productive than non-frontier firms
Connect people & processes with new technology
Streamlined use of cloud/mobile technology, document management,
data availability & asset management improves:
Customer/client/stakeholder service Business critical KPIs
Sector competitiveness Employee efficiency
Security
2012
Wifi in 25%
of global
households
1 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
2 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3368517
3 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/742913
4 http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486278/it-manage-
ment/how-to-balance-maintenance-and-it-innovation.html (2014) survey of IT managers
by Forrester Research reported the “keep the lights on” component of the IT budge
5 https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-summary.htm
6 Need reference data from Synergy Keynote
U.S. IT PRODUCTIVITY
ITSPEND
PRODUCTIVITY