ESG recently completed a survey of 2,000 IT decision-makers to understand whether, and to what degree, organizations’ comprehensive technology transformations are reinforcing broad and deep competitive advantages. The study focused on organizations’ progress in delivering modern digital end-user experiences, innovating with data, and more flexibly delivering IT services. Organizations making the most progress across all three of these areas were categorized as Technology Accelerators, and ESG observed that these organizations do in fact outperform their peers lagging in these transformations (Technology Reactors) in many areas.

Additionally, a subset of 695 respondents directly involved in managing their server environments was asked several questions about their compute infrastructure. This portion of the survey asked respondents how automated server management tasks are in their environments and also covered several related key performance indicators. The research showed that organizations accelerating automation:

• Save significant time and effort related to common server management tasks, with respondents estimating that they have reduced person-hours up to 28% with automation.
• Are 4.3x more likely to have made significant progress delivering on-premises IT services as-a-Service and consume an average of 53% of all IT-as-a-Service?
• Are nearly 3x more likely to beat competitors to market and believe confidently that they have the technology needed to adapt and thrive through societal or macroeconomic disruptions.
• Enjoy more flexibility when it comes to workload placement and tends to select workload environments based on their fit with workload requirements.
• Prioritize breadth of applications supported, embedded security features, and deep integration with industry-standard management and orchestration solutions.