IT Industry Survival Looking Forward
As many companies begin to realize what their business environment is looking like, the IT supplier industry as a whole will have to adjust to how we work with our customers. We have to have our customers situation front of mind and be empathetic to the revised goals and plans of your customers’ business at the forefront. At Eclipse, we have taken a deep look at what we think will make the IT Value Supplier industry more successful and believe we will have to adjust. In recent months, we have heard that for the foreseeable future, there will be in the range of 10 to 25% of the physical staff coming back to the office in most industries. The change this brings to the way people work, the physical requirements in the workplace, the changes in demand and usability of public and private transportation all will have a dramatic impact to how companies run their business, interact with their customers and supply their products amongst other things, (i.e. bottom line!).
Industry solutions – particularly interesting – so many have been flipped on their head. Many businesses went to sleep on March 13th operating in their space, and woke up the morning of March 16th, struggling to find out what to do next, whether that is delivering their product to customers’ home or office, operating in a virtual environment and serving some kind of ‘curbside’ operation, or moving to a completely digital consulting business (Physio, instructors, PSW, banking, etc, etc, etc.). Further, businesses have now spent time understanding how they fit into a new business model, how to operationalize and how to make sure they are profitable – these are challenges the supplying industry needs to consider as they offer solutions – examples are Software Defined Architecture (SDA), SDWAN and leveraging a Hybrid or Cloud model efficiently are a few examples of technologies companies can leverage – some of which might have been thought of as plumbing, can now be an employee/customer safety, or care of business solutions.
Virtual Enterprise – as we all are aware, working from anywhere is a requirement for many businesses. Virtual teams, partnerships and even celebrations are here. Many of the Smart technology companies (Cisco, Microsoft), have dramatically improved the AI in their productivity and collaboration tools. Automated transcription, (real-time translation), itemized action taking, and specific individual identification are here and forget usable – they are shockingly already excellent!
Hybrid IT – whether you want to call this outsourced, managed, or whether it is part of your business’ digital transformation journey, a partner that has a deep understanding of Cisco and MSFT, as examples, and be able to blend as needed – can add a ton of value to an organization. The System Integrator can and should make the supplying technology products come to life in the business environment – understanding and applying the full solution to your business and make products live applications is where Eclipse can show our real value.
These, among other Manufacturers that are moving more control and operation to the Cloud, require ongoing learning and experience to help evaluate cloud readiness. Not a revolutionary point, but technology is moving faster than ever, trying to keep up with the latest is a big investment in time and effort. Eclipse is here to help companies focus on their core business and their customers – let us help you with the technology.