As much as IT helps an organization, inefficient IT can actually hinder business operations and cause more problems than it solves.
This is a big reason why IT assessment and optimization is emerging as a field. It aims to reduce IT costs and optimize IT assets in a bid to drive better utilization value.
IT optimization initiatives help boost system integration processes, reduce costs, strengthen business and security risk mitigation procedures, and help identify revenue opportunities all while discarding redundant IT infrastructure and standardizing existing assets and processes.
The global IT assessment and optimization market is expected to reach a value of $22.34 billion by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 18.97% during the forecast period.
Trends to watch in IT optimization
Need for strategic IT cost optimization
Business transformation is often met by several challenges in terms of aligning business and technical needs with client requirements.
Evolving business needs, expansion, rapidly changing customer needs, the emergence of advanced technology, and reduced time-to-market for products and services are some of the concerns that are continuously driving demand for IT processes across enterprises. In addition, organizations are making huge investments in modernizing legacy technologies that meet the requirements of ongoing business innovations.
As companies across several industries face budgetary pressures, CIOs are forced to plan and implement strategic cost initiatives, like IT assessment and optimization. These techniques help companies mitigate the risk of revenue leakage and reduce operating costs.
Optimized systems also enable companies to be more responsive to user needs. Optimization can bring about drastic changes to the way IT services are delivered, and elevate the value of information technology in the company. Organizations that use IT assessment parameters and optimization metrics to measure the IT infrastructure efficiencies are overall more successful in reducing their operating time and workloads.
Increased demand from public sector
Cloud technology is increasingly gaining popularity in the public sector, which has increased the need to integrate capabilities to fill functional gaps in existing systems.
Because of this, the role of IT assessment and optimization should gain traction in the forecast period as it provides end-users, customers, and employees with the ability to innovate and manage IT at significantly lower costs.
Growing popularity of SLOE tools
Changing regulatory compliance and increasing back-office automation have created several issues in the IT assessment optimization pathway. The legal liabilities associated with compliance requirements are a key concern leading organizations to adopt this approach. The need to eliminate redundant and unused software is also driving the need for software assessment or software license optimization (SLOE) tools. SLOE provides IT managers with license risk analysis, and a significant proportion of organizations should implement these tools in the future.
