Are you a salesperson, marketer, investor or engineer working in the technology industry? No? Then this blog posting is not for you. Nothing to see here, this is not the blog you’re looking for.
If you’re still reading, then you must have some interest in the technology sector. And if you have any interest in this sector at all, then pay attention, because this may be the most important information you’ll read all year.
Every year for the past four years, Nutanix has worked with Vanson Bourne to survey thousands of IT decision-makers about how they run their enterprises, what they need in order to do this better, and what they plan for the future. Seriously, thousands of VP’s and CIO’s across every industry vertical and geography have provided detailed information about how they run their shop, what they need most, and what they plan to buy next.
If, like me, you love reading, then here’s a link to this year’s survey results: https://www.nutanix.com/enterprise-cloud-index.
For those of you who don’t like to read, but just need to know the highlights, here they are:
- More than 80% of IT buyers consume capacity from more than one public cloud vendor and their own on premises infrastructure as well. More and more of them are doing this each year, they are doing this on purpose, and they plan to continue to do so.
- These same IT buyers believe that it would be ideal to operate all of this capacity, whether on premises or in any public cloud, in the most optimal, secure and flexible way possible, with minimal refactoring. However, only 36% are doing this today.
- Covid and the rise of remote and hybrid work has accelerated the adoption of this mixed mode of operation, and 61% of these IT buyers don’t see their enterprises regressing to a pre-pandemic operating model.
- If you want IT buyers to buy your stuff, then a majority of them would like you to know that you’ll need to make sure your stuff:
- Plays nicely in the mixed ecosystem of technologies that IT likes to consume
- Is secure in every mode
- Enables data integration at scale
- Doesn’t break the bank
- Does not require specialized skills to further tax existing IT teams
To take significant license with George Bailey’s seminal speech to the Bailey Bank and Loan’s Board of Directors in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”: “Why…you're all businessmen here….doesn't giving IT what they want make them better customers? What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait till their hardware depreciates and their ELA’s term runs out? Wait? Wait for what?! Just remember this, IT Vendors, that this IT Rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this ecosystem. Well, is it too much to ask to have them work and pay and live and die with technology that does what they want?”
Every time I hear this speech I think about my people—the people of Enterprise IT. Scrambling to provide business enablement with limited budgets and massive technical debt, stuck in the “slums” of draconian vendor contracts and outdated platforms, and minimized by the vendor notion that we are “cost-centers, nerds, ‘locked-in’ and not really engineers”.
The pandemic has shone a bright light on the importance of each of our roles in this supply chain, this ecosystem. It has shone a light on the importance of IT’s ability to blend technology and operational excellence in service of employees and customers. It has shone a light on the imperative for open systems, resilient supply chains, and application mobility.
For the last four years, thousands of IT buyers have sent this same signal, ever-strengthening, to our ecosystem via the ECI. How many more years do we have to wait? Now is the time to stand our ground. No more vendor lock-in, no more lax security, no more shoddy platforms or unmanageable infrastructure that sucks the life out of our teams and lacks even the most basic capability for resilience and integration.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you pay attention to this Enterprise Cloud Index survey and, to the extent that you have a role in this, you use what you learn to help our shared community to thrive. No one wants to live in Pottersville.
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