The growing hunger for consumption-based IT services

Busi­ness­es and organ­i­sa­tions no longer need to rely on CAPEX bud­gets when pur­chas­ing and man­ag­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal IT infra­struc­ture. Instead, there is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to save time and mon­ey, and mit­i­gate risks by har­ness­ing con­sump­tion-based mod­els.

The idea began 20 years ago when Ama­zon launched AWS, estab­lish­ing a mind­set shift in how enter­pris­es bought tech­nol­o­gy and appli­ca­tions.

Take email as an exam­ple. This once neces­si­tat­ed the employ­ment of a small team just to man­age the serv­er infra­struc­ture. The same can now be achieved on a per-user-per-month basis as one inter­nal per­son works with an exter­nal provider that will man­age every­thing at a trans­par­ent and fore­cast­ed cost.

The same the­o­ry extends to all man­ner of soft­ware, as well as to on-premise servers and lega­cy infra­struc­ture being migrat­ed to the cloud. Con­trol, con­fig­u­ra­tion, com­pli­ance and day-to-day oper­a­tions are pro­vid­ed by a third-par­ty ven­dor or ser­vices part­ner.

Con­sump­tion-based ser­vices offer greater pre­dictabil­i­ty for CTOs and sim­pler finan­cial secu­ri­ty for CFOs, along­side agili­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and reduced man­age­ment. It allows CTOs to spend more time focused on the mis­sion-crit­i­cal, free­ing up bud­get to spend else­where.

The advan­tages already expe­ri­enced from con­sump­tion-based ser­vices are a key fac­tor in why CTOs are attract­ed to adopt­ing them else­where across their net­work infra­struc­ture. This includes every­thing from LAN and WAN infra­struc­ture to data cen­tre fab­rics, and com­plex end-to-end secu­ri­ty solu­tions.

As cur­rent five- to sev­en-year pro­grammes of cap­i­tal invest­ment end, organ­i­sa­tions can act dif­fer­ent­ly to deliv­er the same while avoid­ing the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty com­ing their way.
There are many inte­gra­tion chal­lenges to be worked through. But a trust­ed part­ner can guide CTOs through all lev­els of migra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion, while allay­ing any fears.

How­ev­er, to do this suc­cess­ful­ly, a clear strat­e­gy must already be in place. The pri­ma­ry focus must be to devel­op a roadmap found­ed on strate­gic imper­a­tives. The answer is not sim­ply to dive into more pro­cure­ment for anoth­er invest­ment cycle and then write this off as a cap­i­tal expense, as has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the case.

Tack­ing the strate­gic imper­a­tives

CTOs can safe­ly, secure­ly and effec­tive­ly con­sume IT infra­struc­ture in a way that’s fit for the future with­out own­ing all, or any, of it. Organ­i­sa­tions can invest today in the tech­nol­o­gy of tomor­row with­out hav­ing to pay upfront.

But one major risk must be tack­led first. Putting too great a focus on the ‘what’ – the prod­ucts – rather than the ‘why’ – the strate­gic imper­a­tives – can quick­ly lead to fail­ure. A roadmap helps here because a com­pa­ny must ful­ly under­stand where it is, before it can know where it is going.

What­ev­er the sec­tor, every com­pa­ny must have a clear view of its future state. To achieve this takes time and a deep analy­sis of the cur­rent state, iden­ti­fy­ing all the gaps. This cre­ates a firm blue­print that will iden­ti­fy all the demands and chal­lenges in the years ahead.

Hav­ing this as the foun­da­tion upon which to make deci­sions means organ­i­sa­tions can be more cre­ative about the way they choose to con­sume ser­vices. Know­ing the strate­gic imper­a­tives is also crit­i­cal for CTOs when approach­ing CFOs and CEOs for their buy-in.

Today’s core busi­ness chal­lenges faced by the C‑suite – effi­cien­cy, automa­tion, agili­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty – are per­fect­ly met by con­sump­tion-based ser­vices. Board­rooms and lead­er­ship teams do not need to ful­ly grasp the tech­nol­o­gy involved, but they do need to under­stand the invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty for the bot­tom line and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Being able to use OPEX rather than CAPEX bud­gets is a major pos­i­tive for them. But whether the need is to migrate 10% of an estate from per­pet­u­al to sub­scrip­tion-based licences, plug resourc­ing gaps or free up cap­i­tal to con­sume the lat­est prod­ucts and ser­vices, a trust­ed part­ner can help.

Their work will include deliv­er­ing oper­a­tional con­sis­ten­cy and own­ing the risks as CTOs con­tin­ue deliv­er­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal projects on time. This change in approach to prod­uct and ser­vice deliv­ery through con­sump­tion requires a dif­fer­ent type of expe­ri­enced inte­gra­tor, one who can effec­tive­ly source the right prod­ucts and ser­vices.

They should also be capa­ble of plug­ging any resourc­ing gaps along the way through staff aug­men­ta­tion ser­vices. Resourc­ing can be con­sump­tion-based by find­ing the right skills at the right time. This is becom­ing hard­er and hard­er dur­ing the cur­rent bat­tle for tal­ent and the best inte­gra­tors can deliv­er this exper­tise at a frac­tion of the cost of a large annu­al salary to deliv­er on a spe­cif­ic project.

Nav­i­gat­ing the roadmap

Whether in the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor, CTOs will always seek to min­imise risks and improve effi­cien­cies. Con­sump­tion-based ser­vices are ide­al for man­ag­ing peaks and troughs, along­side com­plex mov­ing parts.

Any trust­ed part­ner nav­i­gat­ing this with you must ful­ly under­stand the scope of all mar­kets to help clients strate­gise. They will have sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing cost mod­els to sup­port tran­si­tions to the cloud or to myr­i­ad con­sump­tion mod­els.

This is where For­fu­sion brings val­ue. Our clients are mid-sized and large enter­pris­es in the pri­vate sec­tor, along­side health, local and nation­al gov­ern­ment, and the broad­er pub­lic sec­tor. We can also utilise our secu­ri­ty-cleared per­son­nel where required.

Our sig­nif­i­cant exper­tise comes from devel­op­ing and deliv­er­ing con­sump­tion-based ser­vices for our clients’ mis­sion-crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, under­stand­ing that CTOs will fear con­nec­tiv­i­ty prob­lems and avail­abil­i­ty issues. For the NHS Trusts we work with, this can lit­er­al­ly be a mat­ter of life and death when there are machines keep­ing patients alive.

It is a respon­si­bil­i­ty we take extreme­ly seri­ous­ly. We will assess and advise, and togeth­er we will design, inte­grate and oper­ate across one or more tech­nol­o­gy pil­lars. Whether the require­ment is licence con­sol­i­da­tion, secure net­work­ing infra­struc­ture, cloud migra­tion, or cir­cuit pro­vi­sion, we deliv­er con­sump­tion-based ser­vices pre­cise­ly the way you want them.

Our roadmap and strat­e­gy def­i­n­i­tion ensures suc­cess­ful realign­ment and tran­si­tion by focus­ing on long-term return goals. These might include com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, finan­cial gain or mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact on sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

For­fu­sion has years of expe­ri­ence assess­ing exist­ing envi­ron­ments and align­ing them to a future state. The scale of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion required in the next three to five years can be daunt­ing for a CTO, but we are vast­ly expe­ri­enced at han­dling the most com­pli­cat­ed and com­plex sce­nar­ios.

Con­sump­tion is a mod­el that is mov­ing aggres­sive­ly, far quick­er than many tech­nol­o­gists had antic­i­pat­ed. When approach­ing this, your organ­i­sa­tion should nev­er just be anoth­er num­ber for a ven­dor. The risk of fail­ure is too great. For this type of imple­men­ta­tion to work, the notion of con­sump­tion must be realised and achieved via a robust ini­tial strat­e­gy.

The path to con­sump­tion rather than tra­di­tion­al pro­cure­ment is unavoid­able. Now is the time for CTOs to iden­ti­fy their chal­lenges, set base­lines and move their organ­i­sa­tions for­ward by embrac­ing the advan­tages and ben­e­fits that con­sump­tion-based ser­vices can offer.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it forfusion.com/services/assess

Pro­mot­ed by For­fu­sion