IT spring cleaning sits high on the agenda for UK enterprises

It's not difficult to picture the scene which confronted many IT leaders early in 2020. With the pandemic spreading rapidly across the globe and national lockdowns emerging as a valuable tool to halt the virus's progress, IT teams began preparing to pivot their technology to support an untested remote operating model.

While in the early days, tactical challenges as simple as laptop procurement and broadband speeds absorbed mindshare. Now, almost a year after the first lockdown in the UK, priorities have started to shift as enterprises look to redesign their IT and Operations to align with new market demands. Several buckets of work are drawing the attention of decision-makers - particularly the need to rationalize, modernize, and optimize business applications.

In PAC's recently published CxO study - which surveyed over 350 enterprise leaders across verticals in the UK - 84% of respondents advised they plan to reduce the number of business applications they run. During the early stages of the pandemic, leaders tasked IT with migrating critical business applications to the cloud or building workarounds that enable continued access. For many, this simple process revealed the sheer scale and complexity of business applications dotted across their sprawling enterprise - fuelling a period of CIO soul-searching. Defining criticality itself is a significant challenge for many, let alone mapping dependencies and priorities under considerable time pressure. And so it seems many, learning from this experience, have decided to do some spring cleaning in 2021. In line with broader strategic imperatives, we've seen including ambitious cloud migration projects.

Alongside the rationalization program, we'll likely see significant modernization projects launched to bring the remaining applications up to date. Indeed, among the same pool of 350 enterprises, 79% believe their existing application estate does not meet their digital strategy.

For the provider community, the dawning realization from enterprise leaders in the UK that their business applications are too numerous and are holding back their digital ambitions presents a significant opportunity. Enterprise leaders looking to embark on substantial rationalization, optimization, and modernization programs will need help from well-stocked and equipped technical teams. And most of them know it - 66% admit that they do not know where to start on their journey and concede they will need help to make a dent.

So, while 2020 was a year of emergency action followed by stabilization, 2021 may be the year we see some serious transformation work - starting at the core of the modern enterprise. And for the service provider community, the clear need for solutions and services that help enterprises meet their ambitious spring-cleaning plans is a positive market signal in what’s been a challenging 12 months.