Covid-19 might have hastened the adoption of digital transformation but companies embarking on a radical overhaul of their operations are in danger of catching a nasty cold, with skills shortages, legacy systems, limited budgets, and a lack of support from senior management still standing in the way of successful implementations.
So says a new report from Veeam, which surveyed more than 1,550 enterprises across 18 countries and found that although most firms have digital transformation as a key priority for the year ahead, most need to learn to walk before they can run.
While nearly half (44%) said that a lack of IT expertise is preventing or has prevented their organisation from implementing digital transformation, it would appear that a far larger issue is organisations’ ability to cope with outages, with 95% of those surveyed saying they experience unexpected downtime, lasting nearly two hours at a time.
The report, which claims that an hour of downtime for a high priority application can cost over $67,000, insists that outages can also damage customer relations and brand reputation.
Furthermore, nearly three quarters (69%) of respondents said they have a “protection gap” between data being backed up and the amount of data they could afford to lose in an outage. A similar number reported an “availability gap” between how fast applications need to be recovered and how fast they can be recovered in reality.
The report also focused on the importance of cloud infrastructure, with 78% of respondents saying digital transformation was their main reason to adopt cloud services, but a lack of time and resources can often prevent them from making the transition.
Veeam CTO and SVP of product strategy Danny Allan said: “Technology is constantly moving forward, continually changing, and transforming how we do business – especially in these current times as we’re all working in new ways. Due to digital transformation, it’s important to always look at the ever-changing IT landscape to see where businesses stand on their solutions, challenges and goals.
“It’s great to see the global drive to embrace technology to deliver a richer user experience, however, the Achilles Heel still seems to be how to protect and manage data across the hybrid cloud. Data protection must move beyond outdated legacy solutions to a higher state of intelligence and be able to anticipate needs and meet evolving demands. Based on our data, unless business leaders recognise that – and act on it – real transformation just won’t happen.”
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