Cisco released the IT Operations Readiness Index report, and Chinese enterprises' IT operations provide more value to their businesses

[Original article from 51CTO.com] Cisco recently released the "IT Operations Readiness Index" report. When communicating with the media, Xu Kaibo, senior vice president of Cisco Greater China and general manager of the Customer Experience Group, gave a profound interpretation of the report.

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The reporter learned that this report is the result of a large-scale research project conducted by Cisco in 2018. The survey covers seven countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Australia, India, and China. The respondents are more than 1,500 senior IT managers from seven countries around the world, of which 38% are chief executives. Xu Kaibo believes that the IT Operations Readiness Index allows today's companies to understand their position in the index, as well as their investment methods and future development directions. Crucially, the study also proves the strategic impact of operations on business results and reveals the key to success.

Enterprises will use a larger proportion of their budgets to transform IT operations

In the report, the index is graded according to four maturity levels: passive, active, predictive and forward-looking, based on how companies handle incidents and optimize their current operations. These four maturity definitions are different: the first "passive" refers to responding to operational events when they occur; the second is to turn passive into "active", organizing problems that have occurred before, so that the same problems will not occur again in the future, and "active" refers to learning from past events to improve processes; the third "predictive" refers to using data to predict and respond to upcoming events; the fourth and most mature level is "forward-looking", using data to continuously optimize business results and make some technical decisions through the collected big data.

Xu Kaibo pointed out that only 14% of organizations are at a high level, that is, they have the ability to "foresee". A large part of organizations are still in the "active" range, which means that most organizations have gotten rid of the passive state of IT groups managing IT environments many years ago. However, they have not yet reached the "predictive" stage, and are far from the "foreseeable" stage. There is no doubt that competition is accelerating, and companies are spending a larger proportion of their budgets on achieving IT operational transformation. Today, this expenditure accounts for an average of 28% of the IT budget.

"68% of companies expect to increase this budget in the next 12 months. While expanding the overall IT budget, they will also increase the proportion of IT operation and maintenance accordingly. Compared with purchasing hardware, software, separate services, separate suppliers and other infrastructure, they will pay more attention to the proportion of overall IT operation and maintenance." Xu Kaibo said that currently this proportion accounts for an average of 28% of the entire IT, that is, for every 100 yuan spent, 28 yuan is spent on IT operation and maintenance, and this proportion will continue to grow in the future.

During the interview, Xu Kaibo took the banking industry as an example and told reporters that both large banks and small and medium-sized banks have large-scale IT operation and maintenance teams. Senior executives in the banking industry generally believe that a large amount of IT budget was previously invested in infrastructure and data collected by the infrastructure, and the IT operation and maintenance team has become a collector of first-hand information. Therefore, the IT operation and maintenance department will be expected to provide more business advice, and senior executives hope that the IT operation and maintenance department can provide more decision-making support through artificial intelligence.

7 major differences in Chinese business operations

In addition to the above findings, Xu Kaibo also gave a detailed interpretation of the report’s summary of China’s market performance.

First, in terms of IT budget, China is basically on par with the other six countries in terms of budget allocation ratio and budget increase. This relatively flat situation means that China is moving forward with all its strength on the high-speed train of IT operation development.

The second point is the relevance to the business. 79% of Chinese organizations believe that IT operational data analysis is used for some business decisions, but not all decisions. This number is more widely used than in other countries. However, only 18% of Chinese organizations believe that they are highly dependent on big data, automation and other analysis to make business decisions, which is relatively small compared to other countries. This set of data shows that Chinese companies are exploring and are also willing to accept.

The third point is about benefiting from IT operation investment. Chinese enterprises responded positively to this aspect. Chinese enterprises said that their investment in IT operation in the past 12 months has improved the satisfaction of external customers. The investment in IT operation has obtained very good returns in terms of innovation and customer satisfaction.

The fourth point is the feedback on the current maturity. 39% of organizations believe that they are still in the active stage, but 44% of Chinese companies expect to reach the "forward-looking" operational capability level within two years, which is very ambitious and the proportion is relatively high among the seven countries.

The fifth point is the degree of enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. 48% of Chinese companies said that AI is an emerging technology that has a greater impact on their automation capabilities. Similarly, 48% of respondents said they plan to use artificial intelligence in the future. China scored high in these two aspects.

The sixth point is about talent. In China, the proportion of companies that have not yet established a chief data operations officer is very low, only 2%, which is significantly ahead of other countries.

The last point is whether to obtain data from suppliers and whether the supplier's data is important to IT operation and maintenance. China is relatively conservative in this regard. This is related to the operating habits of many Chinese organizations, whether they are young, and whether they are in the transformation stage.

Cisco Business Critical Services 2.0 helps enterprises better cope with future operations

The reporter learned that when talking about the future business operation trends, the report also clearly summarized four directions:

First, artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the corporate decision-making process. Second, the factors of talent and leadership are becoming increasingly prominent, and talents who can use new skills (such as data analysis) are becoming more important. Third, when data becomes very important, the role of suppliers also needs to become diversified. For example, suppliers will play a key role in error diagnosis, benchmarking and threat intelligence. Finally, innovation, companies are more concerned about using a forward-looking method to analyze data to make business decisions more diversified, and this process requires continuous innovation.

So based on this survey, how should Cisco's product strategy and service strategy match the current situation and prospects of the market? Xu Kaibo replied that after several years of transformation, Cisco has a very fixed roadmap for its entire product strategy and service strategy. "Cisco will make more intense efforts to promote and develop its expertise in areas such as big data, security, multi-cloud, and network-centricity."

He used services as an example to introduce Cisco's changes in recent years. In October 2017, Cisco launched Critical Business Services 1.0. Now Cisco has made relative adjustments to the configuration of the key business focus to cater to the trends mentioned in the report. Based on this, Cisco proposed Critical Business Services 2.0 on the basis of Critical Business Services 1.0.

Xu Kaibo told reporters that the new functions proposed in this key business service 2.0 are first of all the addition of artificial intelligence related functions, such as fingerprint recognition and data collection; secondly, the development of automated fault management (AFM), after adding artificial intelligence technology, the background support and the cooperation of engineers have become integrated; finally, the device API interface has become more open, so that it can be more organically combined with the technical solutions of partners.

"This is a very important transformation initiative for Cisco, moving from a closed loop to an open loop." Xu Kaibo said that Cisco's Business Critical Services 2.0 is committed to better promoting service innovation and responding to customer feedback. Cisco hopes that through more predictive and customized functions, business critical services can help customers achieve faster and larger-scale changes in the field of IT operations. "We hope to free up IT operations personnel to innovate, and let automation, artificial intelligence, big data research, and advanced data collection and process-based processing be handled by Cisco's service providers, so that IT operations personnel can have a significant improvement in problem solving, automated software compliance, automated configuration compliance, network availability, automated regulatory compliance, design services, emergency response retainers, and KPI goals."

He said Cisco's Business Critical Services 2.0 are also moving toward anticipating unforeseen problems, automating difficult-to-manage tasks, and addressing unresolved challenges.

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