APJ IT decision makers see IT as strategic for business growth and customer engagement

EMC has shared the findings of a survey* that asked IT decision makers in Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) for their perspective on IT’s role as an enabler of business change during the shift towards the megatrends of cloud, mobile, social and big data. The impact of these megatrends has fundamentally changed the expectations of consumers and end-users who increasingly want to interact online, anytime and from anywhere, making IT more strategically important than ever before.

Source: EMC. View individual region or city infographics here.

IT had been focused on creating efficiencies and driving down cost. But the EMC Forum Survey reveals that in APJ, IT is now viewed as a strategic enabler to grow business and better connect with customers. 

The top three areas where these trends will have an impact are in:
Building new products and services (43%),
Improving customer experience (35%) and
Streamlining business functions and improving efficiencies (31%).

Organisations are increasingly moving to the cloud, with 68% now agreeing that combining public and private cloud can improve security and agility. However, barriers will need to be
overcome to achieve full potential.

Perspective of IT

• 67% of respondents across the region report that their CXOs consider IT as a strategic lever to grow the business, now more than ever before
• The top three business priorities when implementing new technologies in organisations from APJ are: delivering savings and finding efficiencies (37%), innovation in product
line and services (31%) and to help win new customers (31%).
• 72% of respondents in APJ agree that their organisation sees the increasing role of automation – such as software defined storage – as critical to business growth.

Leveraging megatrends

• 79% of respondents in APJ expect next-generation technologies such as mobile, social, cloud and big data to give their organisation a competitive advantage.
• Over the next year, the top areas where respondents expect to see an influence from these megatrends are: building new products and services (43%), improving customer
experience (35%) and streamlining business functions and improving efficiencies (31%).
• As businesses operate increasingly online today, 68% of respondents identified a need for joint public and private cloud services – hybrid cloud – as a means for greater agility and
security.

What's next?

• Only 58% of respondents across the region believe their organisation has the right level of skills and knowledge to complete business priorities successfully.
• More than two thirds of respondents (69%) believe that getting IT staff trained to keep pace with the implications of technology megatrends will be a challenge for their
organisation over the next few years.
• Although 67% of companies see IT as a business enabler, the majority of companies (58%) believe that spending for technology was outside of IT’s control – indicating there
is still work for IT to do in gaining trust from decision makers.
• 69% believe that the model IT department of the future will act as the in-house provider of on-demand services including platform-as-a-service and public and private cloud.

Said Jeremy Burton, President, Products and Marketing, EMC: "Consumer expectations have undergone a radical shift. Consumers now expect to interact not only with each other, but with a multitude of organisations online, via mobile and at the speed of now. To remain relevant and competitive, businesses across every industry are reinventing their business models to handle extraordinary levels of consumer access, interaction and scale. For this reason, IT finds itself back in the driver’s seat, morphing from cost cutter to a true catalyst for change through the use of hybrid cloud and related technologies.”

"Businesses in Asia-Pacific and Japan are already recognising IT as a key strategic enabler for business growth and are keen to take advantage of next generation technologies – such as hybrid cloud solutions – to gain an edge over the competition. However, while there is consensus IT is a strategic lever, organisations need to tackle the issues that are stopping them from truly redefining their business. As they continue on their IT journey, IT departments should also look at ways to gain the trust of decision makers, and continuously develop skillsets that will help them keep up with innovation," said David Webster, President, Asia-Pacific and Japan, EMC.

*Collected during a non-mandatory questionnaire after completion of registration for the EMC Forum events held across Asia-Pacific and Japan, this research polled a total of 2,402 business and IT management and executives, technical architects, data scientists and storage/infrastructure managers from a range of businesses in the region.

More than 50 EMC Forum events took place globally between July and November 2014.Visit http://www.emc.com/campaign/global/forum2014/survey.htm for a closer look at survey results by country as they become available. The series will conclude with an announcement of
the global results in December.