At the fifth annual conference Technology and Resilience 2018, the critical IT infrastructure company BAIP invited its customers, partners and IT professionals to learn more about IT as a service – a new strategic approach not only to IT, but also to business management as a whole.
Gytis Umantas, BAIP CEO, welcoming the conference, emphasized that the business environment has been changing rapidly over the last few years. In order to remain competitive, companies must act faster, must purify their business processes, respond flexibly to change, and open up to innovation.
“We see that new technologies complement old systems, and new employees bring a different approach to business and work. In organizations, hierarchies are replaced by flat structures, and control – by empowerment and trust. Some long-running processes are no longer working, but those stepping in are not yet as effective. Therefore, it is now very important to discuss the ITaaS model – a new approach to IT management”, emphasized G. Umantas.
The ITaaS model changes the management of the organization – technologies serve the specific needs of the company’s users. The role of IT professionals is changing, requiring less maintenance of IT systems and more dedication to business goals. Migration from the traditional IT model to ITaaS is not a mere replacement of some technology solutions with others. In order to implement it effectively, it is necessary to revise business processes and make changes across the full scale of the organization.
How not to become a market dinosaur
Philippe Abdoulaye, an IT consultant who developed and refined the ITaaS business model, provided a broader insight of the ITaAS concept. According to the expert, in most large business organizations, IT systems are outdated, dysfunctional, and require a lot of human and financial resources. However, new companies (such as start-ups) entering the market are far more flexible and dynamic – they are not “tied” to expensive IT systems, and therefore can compete effectively with clumsy market “dinosaurs”.
According to Philippe Abdoulaye, the transition to ITaaS allows organizations to manage processes more effectively and to gain competitive advantage, however, many organizations make a mistake and implement the ITaaS model only partially. It is often overlooked, that it is important to include all the management of the company, and not just the IT department, in the transition to ITaaS.
“ITaaS is an integrated approach to corporate management. By implementing ITaaS, organizations need to make much more than the replacement of some of IT systems or hardware with cloud services – all business processes need to be reviewed and systematic organizational changes need to be made”, shared his ideas the guest of the event.
Raising competitiveness with digital transformation
Radomir Bordon, a representative of Dell EMC, in his presentation highlighted the ongoing digital transformation that is taking place around the world and covering all sectors of the economy.
According to the guest, increasingly more businesses realize that the main goal of digital transformation is to remain competitive on the market. The Dell EMC speaker assured that the deployment of the ITaaS platform should be one of the most important steps in business transformation. Moreover, it is important for enterprises to take further steps – to use cloud applications, to utilise the advantages of data analysis, and to ensure the cooperation between the IT department and other business units within the organization.
Challenges and solutions of the cloud
Microsoft’s speaker Tarmo Tikerpäe presented Microsoft’s Azure services and discussed cloud computing challenges and cutting-edge solutions. Companies implementing cloud solutions often use only a little part of the cloud capabilities, thus it is crucial to expand the horizons. For example, if 3-4 years ago companies were concerned about security in the cloud, now we see a different trend – the business goes to the cloud because they believe it is a safer way to take care of information and business security”, T. Tikerpäe said.
During the event, participants could enjoy the insights from the representatives of BAIP, Oracle, WatchGuard, NRD CS and other companies. Tanel Särgava, a representative of Andmevara, presented the solutions for the transfer of Estonian municipal services to the cloud, which helped them to shorten decision making times and improve their transparency, along with the better customer experience when dealing with municipalities.
At the end of the conference, the participants analysed a practical business case and tried to improve the implementation of business needs through ITaaS.
As was demonstrated during the practical simulation, IT professionals understand the future trends and the ITaSS value for businesses not only through new technologies and hardware, but also through integrated service solutions, such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as service (IaaS).
Those willing to learn more about possibilities of applying ITaaS in your organization, will be shortly invited to a practical one-day seminar “ITaaS – a new approach for IT services delivery”, to examine in detail what constitutes the ITaaS, how to apply this model in your organization, and how to start implementing it.
The number of places is limited, thus we suggest you to apply for initial registration by e-mail registracija@baip.lt, indicating “ITaaS Seminar” in the topic.
Photos from the event:
More photos can be found on our Facebook page.
