New Dell Global Study shows business and IT decision makers are aligned on key IT trends

• Increasing business productivity, followed closely by growing the business, are the main considerations for IT decisions

• Cloud is the main IT spending priority and most important technology trend

• Majority agree that compute-centric is the best approach to gain a flexible, scalable and open data center

Dell today announced the results of a new Dell State of IT Trends 2016 global study , which finds business decision makers’ (BDMs) and IT decision makers’ (ITDMs) understanding of current IT trends are much closer than they are generally perceived to be.¹

In the past, business and IT leaders had different levels of understanding of IT trends and technologies. However over time, business and IT leaders’ perceptions of technology have evolved and more closely aligned as new technologies have entered the market and become increasingly critical drivers of an organization’s success.

The Dell State of IT Trends 2016 global study reveals a greater sophistication and alignment in understanding of IT trends between the two groups. The results indicate that IT and business leadership are better collaborating and having in-depth conversations about not only how technology works but how it can propel the business forward.

“There is a lingering misperception that business leaders are disconnected during strategic IT discussions, but times have changed,” said Matt Baker, executive director, Enterprise Strategy, Dell. ”This study reveals that there is an increasingly common understanding between business and IT decision makers on the key IT trends and the growth opportunities that IT can deliver.”

Study Highlights

In today’s data-driven economy, companies need IT that is agile, efficient, scalable and capable of responding to business applications in real time. According to the Dell State of IT Trends 2016 survey, increasing business productivity is the main IT consideration for both ITDMs (81 percent) and BDMs (77 percent), followed by growing the business (71 percent and 69 percent, respectively).

Global decision makers, in companies of all sizes and in both developed and developing markets, are most closely aligned on the following IT trends:

• ITDMs (62 percent) and BDMs (51 percent) agree that cloud computing is the most important technology trend for their companies.

• The ability to burst to public cloud as needed is important to both ITDMs (83 percent) and BDMs (74 percent)

• Eighty-eight percent of ITDMs and 80 percent of BDMs say their organization is considering adopting a software-defined data center (SDDC), is in the process of transitioning, or has already completed the transition to one.

• Global BDMs are more likely to say they are considering adopting SDDC, while global ITDMs are more likely to say they have already started the transition.

• Both groups agree the benefits of SDDC are flexibility, simplicity, efficiency and cost-savings, although ITDMs also place a greater value on increased scalability (57 percent) than BDMs (40 percent).

• By 2:1 margins, both ITDMs and BDMs say they will use more open data center technologies in the future.

• Eighty-six percent of ITDMs and 85 percent of BDMs agree that compute-centric is the best approach to gain a flexible, scalable and open data center.

In terms of technology spending for 2016, cloud is the main priority among both ITDMs (67 percent) and BDMs (59 percent). This is followed closely by data storage upgrades or purchase (54 percent and 48 percent, respectively).

Ice cream flavoring manufacturer Star Kay White must quickly adapt its operations to meet the changing requirements of its global food manufacturer clients. The company replaced its traditional infrastructure that used disparate IT with a centralized, virtualized and redundant solution based on Dell storage, networking, firewalls, services and desktops.

“To meet our clients’ requirements, we must continually fine-tune our operations, which requires the close collaboration of our business and IT leaders to support how we want to evolve our business,” said Mikko Peltoniemi, director of IT at Star Kay White. “Even after doubling sales in the past eight years, we are still just as nimble as we were when we were a smaller organization, and we can respond to customers’ just-in-time requests.”

Dell’s Enterprise Approach

The study results confirm that Dell’s customer-driven, compute-centric and software-defined data center vision is what business and IT leaders need most to meet their business objectives.

• Eight out of 10 respondents agree that a compute-centric approach to data center solution development is key in driving innovation.
• More than eight in 10 of those surveyed agree that integrating hyper converged solutions is the first step in achieving a software-defined data center .
• Decision makers globally say a SDDC is the most important enabler of a digital transformation , more than any other factor asked.
• A hybrid cloud platform is seen as the best place for SDDCs to reside in the future
• Nearly nine in 10 global decision makers agree that open technology best supports data center trends toward application and data portability and broad data center-wide process management, compared to proprietary vendor hardware or solutions.
• The ability to address issues quickly is the top global concern for all respondents when it comes to managing the data center management .

The Dell-sponsored research was performed by PSB, which conducted 1,200 online interviews between April 15 and May 4, 2016, in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, Brazil, India and China. Of the audience, 700 respondents were ITDMs and 500 were BDMs.

¹ Dell-sponsored research conducted globally (US, UK, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India and China) by PSB, which conducted 1,200 online interviews between April 15 and May 4, 2016.