BLUE BELL, Pa., Nov. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent research
sponsored by Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) shows that IT and
business executives in the United
States and Europe believe
cloud-enabled, enterprise-scale agility – the capability to deploy
applications quickly throughout an organization to capitalize on
fast-emerging market opportunities presented by digital business -
is crucial to enabling pervasive adoption of digital business
models.
The survey of 153 executives, which IDG Research conducted on
Unisys' behalf, reveals that respondents view enterprise-scale
agility as the key to realizing closer and better engagement with
customers, which they view as the most important potential outcome
of adopting digital business models throughout their
organizations.
"Our research shows executives' growing appreciation of the need
for consistent, integrated, enterprise-wide digital
capabilities that act as one to fulfill customers', partners' and
internal users' demands," said Bob
West, vice president, Global Application Services, Unisys.
"The more broadly organizations can adopt new approaches to scaling
agility in deploying a business-critical application environment,
the better they will be able to realize the full benefits of
digital business."
Improving Customer Experience Is Paramount Goal of Digital
Business
Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of respondents
say that it is important to implement application agility
strategies in the service of digital transformation, although only
about one-fifth (18 percent) view doing so as critically
important.
Two top benefits of digital business transformation respondents
cite involve improving the customer experience, and respondents
indicate that their organizations are on the way to substantial
progress in achieving that goal:
- 84 percent say that digital transformation can enhance customer
engagement and lead to exceeding expectations to the point of
"delight." In fact, 44 percent of those respondents view achieving
such an outcome as critical and rate their organization's progress
toward achieving it as excellent or very good.
- 79 percent see better connection and reach with customers,
especially mobile ones, as a primary benefit of digital business
transformation. Forty (40) percent view it as critical, and 48
percent rate their organization's progress toward achieving this
goal as excellent or very good.
The respondents overwhelmingly consider the cloud to be the
primary means of driving agility across the application
environment. Seventy-six (76) percent take that view, versus 52
percent who consider implementing a modern application architecture
as the primary route to enterprise agility.
Agile Adoption Accelerating, with DevOps as a Key
Enabler
Sixty-one (61) percent of respondents say that their
organizations plan to increase adoption of enterprise agile
frameworks over the next 12 to 24 months, with the highest
commitment among larger organizations: 72 percent of respondents
from organizations with 500 or more developers project increased
agile adoption.
However, the respondents are clear-eyed about the potential
challenges to achieving agility across the application environment,
citing data security concerns/requirements (62 percent) and scaling
agile culture and processes across the enterprise (52 percent) as
key challenges they face.
The study also shows that respondents view DevOps as a key
enabler for enterprise-scale agility. DevOps involves close
collaboration between development and operations functions based on
the automation of key processes; efficient, cloud-based access to
development technologies via platform as a service (PaaS) and
application platform as a service (aPaaS); and use of
enterprise-agile frameworks, such as Scaled Agile Framework
(SAFe®).
Eighty-four (84) percent of the
respondents say that their organization will have some level of
DevOps adoption in the next 12 to 24 months, with 38 percent having
already adopted the methodology, 29 percent planning to do so and
the remaining 17 percent in the evaluation stage.
Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents in organizations with
500 or more developers say that they have adopted DevOps, and more
than one-third (37 percent) in that large-scale group still plan to
do so.
Respondents say that innovation, cutting time to deployment and
application quality are the top three factors, respectively,
driving consideration of DevOps. Eighty-three (83) percent
anticipate that it will enable them to spend less time and
resources on resolving problems and more time on innovation, 81
percent believe that DevOps can improve responsiveness to business
requests for system changes and 80 percent anticipate that it will
improve application/service quality and performance in
production.
DevOps could also prove to be the solution to organizations'
concerns about creating and maintaining a secure environment for
enterprise agility. One hundred (100) percent of respondents say
that their organizations have adopted or are planning to adopt
DevOps to ensure better collaboration between security and DevOps
professionals, and 95 percent say that they are adopting DevOps to
build consistent and automated procedures to limit risk and address
vulnerabilities.
Unisys Application Services are designed to serve enterprises'
entire application lifecycle needs, from inception to retirement.
Intelligent data analytics predict and resolve potential problems
before they become incidents. The services – including developing
new applications and helping clients migrate legacy applications to
cloud and mobile environments – are designed to create the most
optimized user experience and deliver on the demands of a secure,
digitally enabled enterprise.
Click here to learn more about the Unisys enterprise agility
research results.
About the Research
IDG Research surveyed 153 IT and
business executives in the U.S. (101) and Europe (52) on Unisys' behalf in July and
August 2016. The executives were
affiliated with organizations of 1,000 employees and above.
About Unisys
Unisys is a global information technology
company that specializes in providing industry-focused solutions
integrated with leading-edge security to clients in the government,
financial services and commercial markets. Unisys offerings include
security solutions, advanced data analytics, cloud and
infrastructure services, application services and application and
server software. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.
Follow Unisys on Twitter and LinkedIn.
RELEASE NO.: 1130/9464
Unisys and other Unisys products and services mentioned herein,
as well as their respective logos, are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Unisys Corporation. Any other brand or product
referenced herein is acknowledged to be a trademark or registered
trademark of its respective holder.
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SOURCE Unisys Corporation