NEW YORK, Aug. 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- There's a
significant change taking place in IT today as organizations shift
from the fixed, premise-based, capex IT investments of yesteryear
to a mindset wholly focused on leveraging the tenets of the third
platform – cloud, social, mobile and analytics – to satisfy
digital acceleration in the enterprise and deliver the kind of user
experience (UX) an increasingly tech-savvy workforce demands.
According to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and
managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), for CIOs to
succeed in this new paradigm, they first need a well-defined
strategy centered around the business requirements driving
application adoption. Then, they need to determine the best
"safe harbor" for those applications based on security protocols,
industry regulations and commercial economics, and they need to run
those workloads in a way that promotes business agility and the IT
department's strategic value to the organization while satisfying
the digital demands of the business' end users.
"We often encounter CIOs struggling to make their organizations
more digitally enabled who have jumped straight into the
tactics they think will deliver the results they want,
completely bypassing the strategy needed to create a
performance-oriented digital experience," says Ed Konopasek, Vice President, Managed Solutions,
Logicalis US. "In this new digitally focused paradigm, it's no
longer about building out systems from scratch and supporting
everything on-prem with an in-house team; there are many new ways
to operationalize the consumption of digital services today that
might provide better options. This is where a professional
consultant can help."
Five Things to Look for When Choosing a Professional
Consultant
Choosing a professional consultant wisely will
allow CIOs to minimize the number of partners they engage, an
important task since managing too many consultants is both costly
and time consuming. To help, Logicalis US suggests CIOs look first
for professional consultants that meet these five criteria:
- Have a Point of View: Having a point of view is very
different from having technological expertise. It's about applying
that expertise to develop an opinion about the best way to
implement a particular technology or solution – and it's about
being so confident in that opinion that they're willing to share
their point of view with you. It does not, however, mean rigidly
adhering to a single point of view when another option may work
better. The key is to find a partner that has the expertise to
advise you about what has worked well for other clients in similar
scenarios, yet one who is open to what will work best in
yours.
- Eat their Own Cheerios: As clients move into the third
platform and need help extending their capabilities, there are many
consultants that can talk with them from a position of strength and
experience. But, if you want to limit the number of partners you
have, look for solution providers that are deploying their own
strategies and leveraging their own services where possible. If
they aren't eating their own Cheerios, metaphorically speaking,
then you shouldn't either.
- Promote Choice and Flexibility: If the partner you
select offers its own cloud services, for example, that can be a
plus. But when your business needs dictate using another solution,
the right professional consultant will lead the charge. It's
critical, therefore, that the partner you select is objective
enough to be truly vendor neutral, promoting choice and flexibility
even when that means helping you select a solution or service that
competes with its own. Many partners are now adopting strategies to
manage solutions beyond their own portfolio promoting a framework
offering flexibility and choice all delivered with a high-quality,
consistent end-user experience. In the end, partnering with
organizations like these will allow you to leverage volume and
scale and achieve the best commercial economics while spending less
time managing partner relationships.
- Have a Wide Array of Experiences: A partner that has
served clients across a number of industries will often have a wide
array of experiences and best practices that can lead to creative
solutions that a more linearly focused partner might not have in
its toolbox.
- Be Able to Solve Business Problems Outside of IT: If one
of the CIO's top priorities is to be seen as a more strategic
partner to the business, it's important to have a consultant behind
you that can think outside the box – and sometimes that means
outside of IT. Savvy consultants can often leverage common IT
processes and service management protocols and apply them to
business problems beyond the traditional realm of IT. Can
well-oiled ITIL-oriented processes around incident, problem and
change leveraged through an ITSM platform, for example, be applied
to a manufacturer's warranty returns process? IT consultants that
get to know your business can offer creative ideas that will help
you solve vexing business problems in new and creative ways leading
to innovation and strategic value.
Want to Learn More?
- Explore four IT trends CIOs need to know about as well as the
six common characteristics of digitally driven organizations, then
take a look at this WatchIT video featuring Logicalis CEO
Vince DeLuca discussing the road to
becoming a digitally enabled enterprise:
http://ow.ly/ZyDm303gucs.
- Despite the mantra to do more with less, it's important to
choose a managed services provider based on skill and experience
rather than price; learn more here: http://ow.ly/xD4U303gtoQ.
- Download a Logicalis report, "Five Points to Consider as You
Develop a Cloud Strategy," then find out how Logicalis Cloud
Solutions can bring together the professional, managed, on-premise
data center and protection services you need delivered on your
cloud, its own cloud, or someone else's cloud:
http://ow.ly/4R6m303gtGp.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international
multi-skilled solution provider providing digital enablement
services to help customers harness digital technology and
innovative services to deliver powerful business outcomes.
Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our
focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical
markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications,
media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government,
manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of
our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center
and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace
communications and collaboration, data and information strategies,
and IT operation modernization.
We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's
leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp,
Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North
America, Latin America and
Asia Pacific. It is a division of
Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the
AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.
For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.
Business and technology working as one
To learn more about Logicalis activities through
a variety of social media outlets, click here.
Media contacts:
Nickie
Peters, Director of Marketing,
Logicalis US
nickie.peters@us.logicalis.com
920-338-7622
www.us.logicalis.com
Karen Franse, Communication
Strategy Group for Logicalis US
kfranse@gocsg.com
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com
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SOURCE Logicalis US