Fast-changing technologies are disrupting our lives as today’s business leaders face increasing pressure to drive value across their organizations. That’s why digital transformation tops the strategic agenda in many organizations.
But it’s not just about harnessing technology anymore. It’s about harnessing data and using it to disrupt business. As noted in The Economist: “Data are to this century what oil was to the last century: a driver of growth and change.”
Data is created and used in multiple locations, and must be leveraged and shared with other locations, applications, and infrastructures. It also needs to be managed in a consistent and integrated way. While digital transformation is important, data-driven digital transformation is mission critical.
Become a Data Thriver: Drive growth and change
Today’s organizations want to migrate on-premises workloads to the cloud, develop applications in the cloud, and consume new cloud services. Fragmenting your data while you deploy a hybrid cloud architecture is fatal to your digital transformation objectives. It moves your business backward, not forward.
IDC defines digital transformation (DX) as:
“…a set of practices that leverage new business, technology, and operating models to disrupt rivals and markets in pursuit of business performance and growth. Successful DX relies on converting data into actionable insights, and this reliance on data is contributing to a new era of the data age.”
More mature data-driven DX organizations, which IDC refers to as “Data Thrivers,” attract new customers and develop new revenue streams faster than their competitors. Yet just 11 percent of organizations surveyed can be classified as Data Thrivers.
Data Thrivers consistently and reliably use data to achieve:
- Increased profits – Reduce order to delivery time, upsell and cross-sell products and services, cut low-margin products and services, and eliminate waste.
- Better customer satisfaction and retention – Quickly resolve issues, improve customer touchpoints, and create loyalty programs.
- Improved revenue – Easily acquire new customers, better mitigate risk and adhere to security and compliance regulations.
How well does your organization integrate data? Download the full IDC report on Data Thrivers to see how your organization fares.
Because data is the biggest competitive advantage for many organizations, the solution is clear: a data-driven data fabric that accelerates digital transformation.
NetApp Data Fabric: Data-driven business transformation
The NetApp Data Fabric architecture integrates data across sites, beyond physical boundaries, and across applications. It provides a way to manage data that puts IT in control and simplifies ever-increasing IT complexity. Data is accessible where it’s most needed, allowing IT to make the best strategic decisions so that the business can realize the full potential of their data.
In this way, the NetApp Data Fabric accelerates data-driven digital transformation. By simplifying and integrating all your data and the orchestration of data services across hybrid, multi-cloud environments, you’ll build a catalog of consistent data services that provide data visibility and insights, access and control, and data protection and security. Your data then becomes the foundation by which you achieve your business objectives.
Ultimately, the NetApp Data Fabric helps your organization better use its data to meet business demands and gain a competitive edge. It allows your IT organization to better harness the power of hybrid cloud, build a next-generation data center, and modernize storage through data management. Click here for a deep dive from NetApp Insight 2018.
Together with our partners, such as Logicalis, we are realizing our vision for the future of data services.
Logicalis: Extensible IT that enables digital transformation
As a NetApp Star Partner and through its Extensible IT framework, Logicalis enables data-driven digital transformation by making it easier to deploy new business services, whether they are on-site or in the cloud. With this framework, everything is easily deployed and managed and leverages service management to make things work well together. The result is an open and flexible environment that enables digital transformation. Logicalis offers these services for the NetApp Data Fabric:
- Consulting: Consulting and advisory services to help you design Extensible solutions based on meeting your business needs.
- Implementation: Professional services delivered by expert technical consultants and engineers and focused on Extensible IT needs and projects.
- Management: Day-to-day management of deployed extensible technology and services, standardized on a service-management platform.
Together, NetApp and Logicalis are the dynamic data duo of data-driven digital transformation. To learn more, download Master the Cloud and Become a Data Thriver now.
Kevin Kessler is a Solutions Architect at Logicalis supporting NetApp and Dennis Boutorwick is a NetApp Hybrid Cloud Sales Specialist at Logicalis.