Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 22 | Page 18

TRENDING One year later, new survey data shows businesses continue to make digital transformation progress through the use of digital workspace technologies. A smaller gap exists between potential and what businesses have achieved to date in large part because of higher-level executive commitment and digital workspace investment. Key findings Digital transformation is now an executive priority, with more organisations, 62% in 2016 compared to 56% in 2015, recognising the power of mobility to transform their businesses and lack of adoption as an impediment. #2: Costs drop significantly as businesses embrace digital workspaces and ROI averages 150%. 41% of IT and business decision makers saw improvements in total management costs as they successfully executed on digital workspace efforts, compared with 30% for their non-executing peers. Total management cost savings showed an average reduction of 21% for respondents reporting an improvement. Moreover, digital workspace investment grew, with businesses citing two key goals for their decisions: increasing team productivity and business process re-engineering. Digital workspace technologies are enabling IT to meet executive business objectives with key digital workspace technology characteristics becoming critical to execution. Organisations were found to be in various stages of implementing mobile initiatives. Overall, almost #1: Business gains outweighed operational gains with few exceptions. Companies that have successfully executed digital workspace initiatives reported higher mobile workforce effectiveness, user access to mission-critical applications, and user satisfaction with IT than non-executing companies. #3: Digital workspaces improve the ability of a business to rapidly bring new revenue streams online. 48% of those surveyed that have successfully executed mobility initiatives have seen improvements, compared to 34% surveyed that have not executed. Over half 52% of companies surveyed executing 10+ business mobility initiatives have seen improvements in their ability to more rapidly bring new revenue streams online compared to those surveyed that are executing less than five mobility initiatives. #4: Businesses that execute more mobility initiatives show stronger improvements across all categories. Benefits across all business, operational, and financial categories improved considerably as the number of successfully executed initiatives increased. Those that successfully executed 10 plus initiatives were consistently higher than those that executed five to nine initiatives and those that successfully executed fewer than five initiatives, particularly in the business category. Similarly, across all categories, those that executed five to nine initiatives remained consistently higher than those that successfully executed fewer than five initiatives. Digital workspace is now seen as an effective way to address top-level concerns delivering better security, reducing IT management cost and complexity, and enhancing data loss prevention four out of five organisations, 78% have successfully executed or are actively executing mobile initiatives. #5: Digital workspace reduces business mobility adoption friction, addresses top concerns, and include security and identity management as vital components. Concerns about security are at the forefront of the thoughts of executives but nearly one out of every two executives (45%) views a digital workspace solution as a way to address compliance and security risks. In this year’s survey participants reported that executives begin with a focus on team productivity, streamlining processes, and cost reduction as they look to achieve business objectives through the use of the digital workspace. Although challenges for organisations executing business mobility strategies still exist, digital workspace software is now seen as an effective way to address top-level concerns. #6: VMware customers self-identify as digital enterprises significantly more often its non-customers (84% versus 77%). Nearly two-thirds of VMware customers surveyed (61%) are planning more than 50 mobile initiatives in the next 12 months compared to VMware non-customers surveyed (47%). In response to the same business, operational, and financial questions, VMware customers surveyed reported achieving higher ROI than organisations deploying other technologies. VMware customers also identified more necessary elements to creating a digital workspace platform than non-VMware customers. A digital workspace delivers better security, reduces IT management cost and complexity, and enhances data loss prevention. Achieving these IT outcomes is driving nearly a third (30%) of respondents to deploy digital workspace software to achieve business mobility. n #7: In the majority of cases, the directive to reimagine business processes and deploy digital workspace technology is coming from a strategic push at the corporate level. 18 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com