| |March 20199CIOReviewSavvy organizations take advantage of integrated systems to cross-pollinate expertise across IT personnel so they can deploy and manage application workloads at unprecedented levels of scale as well as allocate budget and staff toward innovations that will drive business growthbudget and staff toward innovations that will drive business growth.Thanks to the rise of mobile computing applications, micro-services, and everything in between, the number of workloads being deployed by enterprises is increasing exponentially. As a result, it is arguably economically unsustainable to hire and retain the necessary IT personnel to support this unprecedented level of expansion using legacy infrastructure. The shift to integrated systems provides the framework for efficiency, so IT organizations can support a much larger ratio of workloads per IT staff member, again freeing-up resources to drive innovation.The Impact on the IT Manager, the Skills Landscape and the IT OrganizationIn fact, many organizations are already starting to recognize the significance of this shift in structure and capabilities of IT staff. According a recent study from Enterprise Strategy Group, which was designed to understand the role that IT transformation plays in the journey to become a digital business, those that are furthest along in IT transformation initiatives are more likely to have IT viewed by the business as a competitive differentiator. They are also more likely to report a highly cooperative relationship between IT and the business, and are making "excellent progress" running IT as a profit centre rather than a cost centre.Additionally, a report published by 451 Research shows that 41 percent of large enterprise IT organizations with 10,000 or more employees plan to evolve how their IT teams are organized. It's only a matter of time before smaller IT organizations look to take advantage of similar economic benefits.And truth be told, most IT personnel are excited about that change. The expansion of their skill sets creates an opportunity to increase the value added services they provide. IT leaders that have adopted integrated systems are clearly the early beneficiaries of advances in IT infrastructure management and IT transformation that are long overdue. In most cases, deploying and managing isolated stacks of compute, storage and networking resources makes neither technological nor economic sense. Integrated systems are rewriting the formulas that organizations use to calculate the return on investment in IT.Benefiting from new infrastructure models, the emerging operational and IT staffing models used to deliver IT services are clearly changing. They also are facilitating IT transformation in a way that allows the IT organization to be more efficient than ever in providing IT services to more effectively reach a business' end goals. It's this IT transformation that is fundamental to a successful digital transformation and creating a digital business. IT staff are joining the front lines ­ creating differentiation and competitive advantage that will set their businesses apart from others in their industries. Hemal Shah
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