'Solutionising is a real problem': Relying on tech is slowing change, say IT leaders

IT must prepare for change – either to defend against it or grasp the opportunity

Technological change is speeding up – but is not a silver bullet for technical or business challenges, said delegates at an IT leaders' roundtable, sponsored by Computacenter and Microsoft, earlier this month.

Change is coming thick and fast today. Remote working, AI, targeted cybercrime - all of these things and more have moved from niche concern to the mainstream in recent years.

On top of that, IT leaders in the room named projects like data centre exits, cloud migration and zero trust adoption as specific challenges they were facing, under significant time pressure.

Rapid change like this has an impact on IT, whether it's looking at how to take advantage of it or how to future proof against it. For some delegates, their industry or company also played a part.

"When you see the problems and compare in different industries, it does matter," said an IT leader in the media sector. Their company has mostly grown through acquisitions, and complexity is limiting the pace of change.

For a delegate in the property industry, their franchise-like company structure was the slowing factor.

"The way the organisation is structured is it's just a bunch of little independent profit centres... There is a lot of autonomy around decision making on what they want to spend our money on, which does mean solutionising is a real problem."

All attendees agreed that business leaders looked to technical solutions to solve problems as a first resort, but that can lead to more problems - and IT gets the blame.

"Recently, the head of our commercial business told my boss that somebody had come to them and said they could spend £10,000 and get a CRM system, and they wanted it by the end of the month. A couple of conversations with a solutions architect later, that £10,000 has become £100,000."

And, of course, it's IT that gets the blame.

"The expectation is running away within the business that IT is now the blocker on our agility, our innovation and our entrepreneurship because they keep insisting on things like security and plans."

Tackling the change blockers

IT itself rarely blocks business-level change these days, but still has a reputation for getting in the way. Some delegates said they refer to security as a reason, while others justified their decisions using regulations like the GDPR.

"If [personal data] gets out, you don't have a business for very long, do you?" said Computacenter's Director of Workplace, Gavin Bell.

Where IT often does step in is to block software silos. One delegate said their company, a multi-national firm in the advertising sector, suffers from software duplication, with multiple departments having purchased the same or similar products.

"Because of our federation of business, other businesses have similar products with the same functionality, similar capabilities - but we are paying here, and they are paying over there."

An attendee in the retail sector had addressed the problem by mandating requirements.

"If they choose an application, things like user provisioning and integrating Azure AD or on-prem AD, how they would access the printers or whatever the solution looks like, we would give them that capability, but there are elements where we would say, ‘When you are choosing your applications, this is what you need to ensue is available, because if you do not then we cannot support you with it.'"

Challenge as opportunity

Windows 11 was the elephant in the room. Some delegates saw it as a challenge, but all were ready to embrace it as an opportunity.

Delegates who had previously been burned by the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 were concerned about the rollout. App compatibility was a major issue in that migration, with one delegate describing the move as "a nightmare."

"We have a ridiculously diverse range of applications in niche parts of our business that have these things. That is our concern. One of the reasons why we haven't really done much about Windows 11 so far is we have only just got Windows 10, modern desktop and Intune in."

Going from 10 to 11 should be much smoother than previous OS upgrades, said Microsoft's Tony Cocks, due to the way the new system has been developed and built.

"The lived experience we have with customers is that they have not had anywhere near those issues going from 10 to 11, because 11 is just another version of 10.

"Microsoft is so confident of that that we have a thing called an App Assure team. If you have an application that doesn't operate as it did in the previous version, those guys and girls will help you get the application to work on 11. The organisation has put its money where its mouth is."

Ironically, Cocks felt that branding had been a blocker to adoption.

"If we called it ‘21H2 UI update with a load of security stuff' [instead of ‘Windows 11'], no one would have been bothered. People would have gone, ‘Yes, I'll have that', and then they would have done it. You would not be having these discussions."

Bringing them on board

As a Microsoft partner, one of Computacenter's major tasks is to help customers move to the new OS. Chief Technologist for Workplace Ashley Richardson pointed out that it is too easy for IT leaders to get pulled in multiple directions during such an important project.

"There are so many things that customers are trying to do at the same time. It's about stopping, pausing and understanding...what we can do, in which order, to actually get the best value from the things we are trying to do."

"It is just really helping customers to navigate across that," said Bell. "We do customer strategy workshops, which help to map out a roadmap of, ‘These are things to do and this is how you can do it.' It doesn't mean Computacenter does it all, it just helps people go back to, ‘Where do I start?'"

Why wait?

While IT leaders are wary about the move to Windows 11, none are willing to delay. "I don't quite see why you would kick the can down the road" was one response that spoke for all others.

Even those who hadn't begun their Windows 11 journey were convinced that they would be mostly migrated by the end of their next financial year.

That won't be possible for everyone - securing budgets for device refreshes was cited as one blocker to the Windows 11 transition - but most attendees agreed that anyone in that position should use this time for preparation and modernisation.

"If people are putting their heads in the sand and thinking, ‘I can forget about that' - I understand that people have lots of other priorities and budget constraints - they are going to struggle with all of this."