Lenovo, AMD: Digital infrastructure to significantly drive business ROI

Source: Lenovo and AMD IDC InfoBrief, CIO Technology Playbook, Where Smarter Leads the Future. The proportion of organisations using or planning to use edge computing technologies in AP was 91% for ASEAN+. The equivalent figures were 97% for India, 86% for Australia/New Zealand, 74% for Japan, and 84% for Korea.

Source: Lenovo and AMD IDC InfoBrief, CIO Technology Playbook: Where Smarter Leads the Future. The proportion of organisations using or planning to use edge computing technologies in AP was 92% for ASEAN+. The equivalent figures were 97% for India, 91% for Australia/New Zealand, 67% for Japan, and 87% for Korea.

Lenovo and AMD have jointly launched a guide highlighting the opportunities, challenges, and considerations for CIOs in today’s data-driven economy. The IDC InfoBrief, commissioned by Lenovo and AMD, aims to help CIOs make the right IT investments. 

Titled CIO Technology Playbook 2023, the document states that with rapid digital transformation (DX) in Asia Pacific (AP), organisations are expected to generate as much as 43% of the revenue from digitally-connected products, services, and customer experiences by 2027.

The CIO Technology Playbook is a study of over 900 CIOs and IT decision-makers in AP. The results observed show concerns among CIOs around macroeconomic factors affecting business growth in 2023 and early 2024. For 53% of respondents, 'high inflation' is the topmost concern in 2023; half (50%) of the CIOs ranked 'high energy prices' and 'escalating raw material prices' as the other key challenge areas.

"The upcoming year is predicted to be a challenging one with economic fluctuations and the acceleration of digital transformation. IT leaders in Asia Pacific are consequently putting more of an emphasis on streamlining processes and utilising technology to optimise resources and increase business agility, so they can react quicker to the changing needs of the industry," said Sumir Bhatia, President – Asia Pacific, Lenovo ISG. 

"In response to the evolving market, businesses in the region are prioritising digital transformation and modernising legacy IT infrastructure. With our pocket to the cloud offerings, Lenovo ISG is well equipped and committed to help modern businesses achieve greater resilience, while keeping cyberthreats at bay."

“It is absolutely essential for business leaders to stay on top of technology trends in order to stay competitive in today’s hyper growth environment. AMD has played a critical role in the transformation process of multiple organisations over the years, and we are thrilled to be a part of this joint initiative with Lenovo. 

"The CIO Technology Playbook 2023 serves to provide CIOs and other business leaders with key insights into 2023 technology trends that would enable business leaders to implement a future-ready digital infrastructure for sustainable growth,” said Peter Chambers, MD, AMD Asia Pacific and Japan. 

“With comprehensive data-driven insights on key trends such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, hybrid/multicloud and data management solutions, our hope is that CIOs will be better equipped to deal with today’s competitive and volatile business climate.”

The study further highlights that IT decision-makers are actively looking to leverage technology to optimise their supply chains and improve asset utilisation, agility, and resilience, enabling them to respond faster to the changing needs of the business. When it comes to business priorities, 36% of CIOs in Asia said driving revenue and profit growth is the top priority, followed by driving higher customer experience and satisfaction. Cost optimisation and savings was named as the top priority by 32% of respondents.

Digital infrastructure

Digital infrastructure can help businesses automate tasks, streamline processes, and improve productivity. Over eight in 10 (85%) Asia Pacific organisations agree that digital infrastructure is essential to achieve business goals. With the advent of multiclouds and rapidly-expanding edge infrastructure, CIOs are highly concerned about growing IT operational complexity and increasing demand for a faster response to their ever-changing and evolving business requirements. 

To accelerate their DX and modernise legacy IT infrastructure, CIOs called out improving cyber resiliency (ranked No. 1 by 49% of respondents in Asia) and automating digital infrastructure management (ranked No. 2 by 47% of respondents in Asia) as the top investment priorities for 2023. 

Hybrid/Multicloud

Over the years, organizations have realised that public cloud does not always offer the best application experience and performance or reduce cost burden from ever-increasing cloud workloads. Additionally, security concerns have urged 68% of organisations in the ASEAN+* region to repatriate workloads from public cloud back to private cloud and/or traditional data centres in the last 12 months.

Hybrid or multicloud is poised to gain prominence in Asia over the next 2 to 3 years, as businesses in Asia Pacific will continue to run more than 50% of mission-critical workloads on traditional data centre infrastructure, systems and platforms, and private cloud infrastructure. Hybrid or multicloud offers the highest levels of performance and meets data security and compliance requirements.

As-a-service models

Mindshare of as-a-service-based consumption models has increased tremendously in AP. Keeping up with the highly volatile, ever-changing business and economic environment, organisations in AP stated cost rationalisation and optimisation as the key drivers of as-a-service infrastructure. Consumption-based infrastructure offers flexibility and agility, helping CIOs ease financial burdens and invest more in business innovation. Eighty-five percent of organisations in ASEAN+ are either already leveraging as-a-service flexible IT infrastructure, or are planning to adopt it in the next 12 months.

Unified data management

Data locked in cloud silos will impede every organisation’s ability to successfully digitally transform and thereby meet digital business goals. Efficient data management requires seamless mobility of data in a highly secure manner across the different deployment locations. While there are growing application interdependencies, only 8% of businesses in Asia Pacific are using a single data management platform, and another 78% of businesses are currently using multiple data management platforms and systems.

CIOs investing in the right platforms and technologies to manage the data explosion at the edge will be in strong stead to build market leadership. Single unified data management platforms offer seamless data mobility across multiple clouds and integrate data across containers and at the edge. Modern single unified data management platforms for myriad data types will be the cornerstone for digitally transforming organisations' data-innovation journey, according to the InfoBrief.

Customer experience

Businesses across verticals such as manufacturing, retail, logistics, transportation, and energy are increasingly focused on delivering a superior customer experience to drive success in the digital economy.

AI will become mainstream in 2023. The application of AI to enhance customer experience is gaining more prominence among CIOs in the AP region. Over 88% of the AP organisations are either using or are planning to use AI/ML applications in the next 12 months. This is more prominent in the ASEAN+ region, with 91% of organisations found to be using or planning to use AI applications in the year ahead. 

Organisations are expected to use AI-powered applications for a broad array of business use cases and functions across vertical industries. In the ASEAN+ region, some of the top business processes which make use of AI and ML are IT operations, sales and distribution, as well as finance and accounting.

Edge innovation will be the next frontier in the DX journey. There is a rapid adoption of edge in AP. 88% of the organisations in Asia are either using or planning to use edge computing in the next 12 months for business operations.

Through edge, businesses can improve the optimal utilisation of assets and enhance overall customer experience while ensuring higher uptime or improved reliability. Real-time customer analytics for omni experience; automated quality control and remediation; as well as asset tracking, geofencing and management were among the top use cases in AP.

The survey was conducted across 12 key markets in Asia – India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

*ASEAN+ includes Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan.