Businesses that leverage mainframe investments while developing a modernization roadmap have better outcomes than those that move off them. These were the conclusions of a 2021 IDC study that analyzed businesses across the globe to measure the efficacy of migrating to the cloud compared to modernizing existing mainframe systems. Replatforming, the researchers found, can be riskier and more costly than modernizing existing investments.

By the end of 2021, 80% of enterprises are expected to put mechanisms in place to shift to cloud-centric infrastructure and applications. By 2024, approximately 64% of infrastructure spending will revolve around investments in cloud and infrastructure technologies. Success will hinge on the architecture strategies that effectively guide the cloud migration process.

The majority of IT organizations in mid- to large-sized organizations are now using a complex combination of on-prem hardware and software and cloud-based enterprise services that are constantly evolving in response to the introduction of new technologies and changing business requirements.

The paths to success with SAP depend greatly on specific circumstances and market dynamics of an enterprise. This is causing organizations to develop agile, future-proof SAP strategies. A recent IDC survey revealed 96% of organizations that had already embarked on application modernization initiatives — or plan to do so in the next 18 months — expect their long-term IT strategy to be affected by the events of 2020, with cloud playing a more pivotal role in the future of their deployments.

Most large organizations that have been around for a while have come to the conclusion that they will continue to operate in an environment in which data centers with legacy systems coexist with private cloud and multiple public cloud resources. As leaders explore ways to automate the management of this hybrid environment, many are looking at SDN as a way to virtualize and integrate disparate assets in a scalable and manageable manner.

As government agency leaders and healthcare administrators execute their transformation initiatives to be more responsive to citizens and patients, IT staffs will be tasked with leveraging virtualization capabilities to integrate resources across heterogenous infrastructures.

If analysts' assessments of the past year are correct, the events of the past year have accelerated business transformation initiatives with most organizations focusing enterprise technology investments on two interrelated trends: cloud adoption and customer centricity. The lessons learned through the COVID 19 have prompted 80% of enterprises to embrace cloud-centric infrastructures and applications at twice the pace set prior to the pandemic.

According to analysts at IDC, cloud in all its permutations is having a major impact on the disposition of core enterprise applications. By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned in the pandemic, most enterprises will accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure and application services.

Change management has never been easy and will not get any easier as organizations embrace complex heterogeneous infrastructures that mix legacy and next-generation enterprise platforms. This was the central conclusion of a moderated CIO.com virtual roundtable co-hosted with Chuck Tsocanos of IBM.

As the complexity of enterprise infrastructures rise in response to accelerated technology modernization and business transformation, organizations across industries are exploring the role that AI will play in optimizing IT operations while introducing innovative business operations.

As the chief owners of the digital infrastructure that underpins all aspects of modern enterprises, IT leaders will play pivotal roles in the road to recovery, “seeking the next normal” while still performing their traditional roles. In a time of turbulence and uncertainty, CIOs and senior IT leaders must discern how IT will enable the future growth and success of their enterprise while ensuring its resilience.

VITEC, a worldwide leader in IP video streaming and video encoding for business, industrial and public-sector applications, today announced that Eric Deniau has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). IP video streaming continues to grow across all markets as more and more enterprises harness the power of their networks.

The financial services sector is among the most mature users of enterprise systems in the economy. Established institutions often preside over generations of computing platforms that have evolved over the years to accommodate on-premises data centers, private-cloud and public-cloud infrastructures, according to executives at KPMG.

New technological developments, the rise of new competitive disruptors and changing customer expectations have elevated the importance of accelerating the pace with which institutions bring new value-added services to market. A growing number of executives are taking a hard look at how fintech services, ISVs and SaaS resources can support this “need-for-speed” in a risk-adjusted manner.

87.4% of network service provider executives agree that programmatic advertising delivered through smart/connected TVs and/or customer premises equipment (such as set-top boxes) will be an important source of revenue for network service providers and pay TV operators in Europe.

Enterprise-wide adoption of digital agreements and acceptance of digital signatures are as much an issue of managing organizational culture as it is about technology management. The era of contactless engagement -- driven by the rise in remote work and digital end-to-end workflows -- is elevating the role of IT in enabling a new generation of internal and external agreements.

Enterprise resource planning software remains one of the most critical business applications of large organizations. Failure to properly incorporate core packages -- like SAP -- into business transformation initiatives can derail the achievement of mission-critical future-state objectives.

New technological developments, the rise of new competitive disruptors and changing customer expectations have elevated the imports of accelerating the pace with which institutions bring new value-added services to market. A growing number of executives are taking a hard look at how fintech services, ISVs and SaaS resources can support this “need-for-speed” in a risk-adjusted manner.

A growing number of organizations are exploring the the state of latency sensitive applications as workforces becomes more distributed and infrastructures become more fragmented (as data centers, old mainframes, private clouds and multiple public clouds emerge as enterprise infrastructure coexist for the foreseeable future).

As organizations across geographies and industries accelerate the deployment of business transformation initiatives, a growing number of executives are exploring how risk quantification can be harnessed to optimize new investments in systems, applications and infrastructures to achieve mission-critical objectives in a safe and secure manner.