image credit: Salesforce
In Salesforce’s 2017 State of IT report, 75% of 2200+ IT leaders said they were in the midst of the biggest historical shift in the role of IT. In this session at TrailheaDX ’17, Ayka Agayeva, IT Operations Lead at Google, Yousuf Khan, CIO at Pure Storage, and Brian Walsh, CEO at CodeScience shared insights on the study findings and how they see the world of IT and application development transforming.
The Four Key Takeaways
To set the groundwork, here are the main outcomes from the State of IT report:
1. Lines Blur between IT and Business Units
There is a seismic shift happening to the IT industry’s role. IT is evolving from a cost center focused on infrastructure to a a value-based service brokerage enabling business transformation. Now a hub for the organization, IT drives success by partnering with business units on how to leverage customer data and streamline cross-departmental processes.
2. The Innovation Imperative Tips the Scales
The delicate balance between pushing the limits of innovation and keeping the business humming is never-ending struggle for IT leaders. That said, “65% of IT teams say innovation for competitive differentiation is a high priority, while innovating for the business is the number one challenge for IT teams to meeting their strategic objectives.” Leading teams are pushing forward to innovate for both differentiation and disruption – all while combatting skill gaps among staff. They are already dealing with the impact of the skill gaps, which are expected to increase over the next two years.
3. IT Tackles the Struggle for Speed
Velocity is paramount. The need for speed is listed among top priorities, key performance indicators, and challenges. IT leaders are experimenting with low-code solutions to help improve speed; however, there are inherent hesitations for this approach due to security, training and governance issues. That said, the majority of IT leaders do intend to provide some app building capabilities to business users.
4. IT Prepares for the Flood of Artificial Intelligence
While the hype of AI technologies is huge for both customers and employees alike, not every IT team has the same sense of urgency or preparedness for AI-related tech transformations. Of course, you can count on high performing teams to fully leverage these capabilities and implement them across the business. There’s an opportunity for alignment between Sales and IT, since Sales is even more bullish on implementing AI.
How to Apply the Findings to Your Business
Learn what Google, Pure Storage and CodeScience are doing differently to deliver fast on key trends around AI, IoT, conversational interfaces and more in this session video from TrailheaDX ’17.
