From Back-Office to Business-Led IT: The Next Phase of Enterprise Infrastructure Investing

By Dave Gordon

All companies are becoming technology companies… even pizza restaurants. Pizza Hut lost its place as the industry leader largely due to Dominos’ digital transformation strategy and its embrace of eCommerce. In our increasingly remote world, companies large and small are under intense pressure to figure out how to take a more digitally oriented posture.

Legacy enterprises that do not accelerate their digital transformation efforts will cede their competitive advantage to tech-enabled disruptors. Digital transformation is built on, and enabled by, the foundation of IT infrastructure. As IT infrastructure continues to evolve and enterprises adapt their strategies accordingly, we see significant investment opportunities in IT infrastructure solutions in the years to come.

IT Infrastructure Defined

Infrastructure derives from the Latin “infra,” which means beneath. Infrastructure, then, means “beneath the structure,” and this very much is in-line with how IT infrastructure has traditionally been treated by the enterprise. IT infrastructure sits beneath and supports business processes and information. Though this traditional treatment persists, innovation in IT infrastructure has accelerated over the last decade with solutions in cloud computing, containerization, DevOps, and edge computing to name a few.

Traditional IT Infrastructure: Back-Office Oriented

Traditional enterprises have historically treated IT as a back-office function, designed to support front-office employees, applications, and processes. This traditional posture has led to IT infrastructures that are challenged to surface data insights, and that generally struggle to support secure and reliable customer experiences. These infrastructure stacks are generally comprised of layer upon layer of technology investments that don’t talk to each other, making innovation cumbersome.