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Global marketplace as we know it today has changed tremendously over the last 10 years or so. Businesses have seen and been through radical changes in this period. Enterprises once known to be profitable and successful have seen their share of lows, and their boardrooms under siege to make radical changes to the way they run their businesses. It is a marketplace with uncertainties, specially having seen two global economic downturns in over the last decade and businesses, big flourishing businesses, going down on their knees - and hordes of others buckling to survive.
The Business Landscape
One of the major forces that are shaping the way businesses are run is the challenging and unpredictable economic environment of today. If companies do not want to find themselves outpaced, outthought and outsold, they need to take necessary steps to ensure that they are agile - to keep pace with the market changes; adaptive - to be able to meet the ever-changing demands of the market and their customers; productive - increase effectiveness and efficiency of everything they invest in; ability to continuously reduce cost, and constantly increase their innovation quotient.
Business market is flat today - the whole world is now one global marketplace where all businesses from across geographies compete and play.
Business leaders are taking active participation in anything that is contributing to the growth of business. So every parameter that touches business growth, be it sustainability or creation of competitive advantage for that business in the global marketplace, are factors looked at from a nativity perspective by business leaders.
Another key business change that we have seen over the last decade is the way businesses look at their customers. The customer demands and needs are shaping industries, and this is a global phenomenon. Businesses interest in identifying the customer needs and satisfying the customers' demands are of a much higher priority. In other words customers directly impact business strategies for any business today across the globe.
Reducing cost and being competitive are on top of the priority list for any business. Economic turmoil and uncertainties only fuel the need to keep costs low. A case in point will be the example of banks. Banks are always looking for ways to reduce transaction costs. They have been at the forefront of adopting innovative business models to enable customers to use cost effective modes of transacting in order to reduce cost per transaction - such as charging for cheque leaves, enabling and promoting Internet and ATM banking, etc.
The Technology Landscape
Technology has changed the way businesses are run. Technology has changed business processes and made organizations more efficient, helped businesses communicate and collaborate beyond borders - made them more innovative, connect to their customers better and faster, respond to market changes faster making the marketplace "flat" and global. Trends in business have changed the technology landscape over the years. Technology changes over the years are driven by:
- Consumerization
- New-age workforce
- Globally expanding business base
- Need to become agile, flexible and highly efficient
Even though new and disruptive technologies have changed the technology landscape, organizations continue to look for ways to reduce the percentage of their IT budget dedicated to running infrastructure and maintaining "status quo". Data Center (DC) takes up the maximum of this maintenance cost.
This will only get more intensive over time. Advent of Cloud, Mobility, Big Data, etc. is going to increase the criticality of the data center. And increasing importance of DC is only going to increase from a cost and operations perspective. There is an urgent need to make the data center more efficient.