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> White Paper | Best Practices in Digital Transformation
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Management Summary
Introduction
The growth of digitalization will impact the core of the global
economy in terms of the value of e-Commerce, transactions
between businesses, in terms of operational eciencies, supply
chain management and the cultivation of client relationships.
Companies that have used data technologies to disrupt how
services and products are sold and delivered can gain competitive
advantage and dominance very quickly.
Surveys conducted on the extent to which businesses are
prepared for or are confident about the digital era indicate a
guarded optimism about what the era will mean for business but
considerable room for improved understanding and preparation.
This White Paper has been prepared to define and advise on specific
stages and requirements in the digital transformation process:
1. The overall process of digital transformation
2. The Internet of Things as a key function in this process,
3. The role of Analytics and
4. Underpinning any IT investment and activity, the need to ensure
cybersecurity.
The focus here is on multi-tenant data centers. These are service
data centers that share raised-floor space, power and cooling
between tenants. They may be shared facilities leased out
commercially or data centers run for client groups within a single
organisation.
Digitalization is of particular relevance to MTCDs since commercial
facilities beyond those oering space to the specifications required
by cloud providers, managed service providers and major enterprise
tenants are particularly vulnerable to the evolution of cloud which
has eroded the retail client base in many markets. These MTDCs
are largely unable to compete with the flexibility and scalability of
cloud or with its basis of charging on the basis of what is used. The
challenge to enterprise MTDCs is one step from this – the role of
the on-prem data center has been eroded over the past decade
partly by cloud but also by data center service providers able to
oer a path to digitalization through higher specification converged
facilities
Digital Transformation
No two definitions of ‘digital transformation’ are quite the same but
most definitions share the following elements:
• It is a process involving change.
• The type of change is usually underwritten as profound or new
– it is a new way of doing things not just a tinkering with the way
things have been done before.
• It involves the deployment and application of digital
technologies.
• The impact will be felt increasingly across business and society
more generally.
Digital transformation is considered by businesses interviewed to
be inevitable, enabling of opportunity, huge, far reaching, risky,
unpredictable, high impact, step-by-step, never ending, transitional,
progressive. It is considered also a catch-all term for a number of
dierent components and activities – most mentioned are big data,
IoT, AI, machine learning, virtual reality and augmented reality.
The reasons for pursuing digital transformation in an MTDC
environment are:
• As a means of running the MTDC whether as a single facility or
across a number of facilities. Given the commercial vulnerability
of some of these organisations and the need to balance costs/
resources against revenues, a digital strategy is seen to improve
all cost elements, improve eciency and compliance.
• As the reason for creating a series of services that might
be developed and leased/oered to clients who need the
processing power and connectivity of an MTDC to formulate
their own approach towards big data, IoT or other elements of
digital transformation.
The cornerstones of digital transformation are seen to enhance the
nature and purpose of the MTDC:
• Data becomes central to the organisation.
• Through the process, all companies become de facto
technology companies.
• That while the emphasis is on the deployment of technologies,
the strategies for this are based clearly on the business
requirements such deployments are intended to meet.
Digital transformation is considered as a long term proposition
therefore best practice can be used as a means to progress through
the steps through which a strategy to coordinate the requirements
of the company with the capabilities of technology can be
developed and implemented. The strategy will progress through
stages of project-by-project application towards one where all of
the company is drawn together, and it will become increasingly
more proactive in enabling the company to become a disruptive
force in its own right.
As businesses move towards multiple environments to meet their
IT needs and move away from the data center towards the concept
of data infrastructure (in which MTDCs usually play a role) so there
needs to be visibility and coordination across dierent parts of the
infrastructure and the networking, computing and storage functions. u