Race to the top: Leaders looking to app modernization in 2023 to drive transformation efforts

New research from Fortune 500 digital solutions integrator Insight Enterprises finds that the key to successful digital transformation efforts may lie in optimizing app performance. The firm’s new survey, conducted by Foundry, reveals an overwhelming majority of business leaders are shifting focus to application modernization to gain an edge in their markets.

Nearly nine in ten (87 percent) of survey respondents cited modernizing critical applications as a key success driver—with driving competitive advantage as the number one reason for app modernization.

The new report, The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023, comes at a time where both optimization and transformation are the strongest undercurrents at companies across every industry. The study examined the digital transformation goals, challenges and achievements of large U.S. enterprises over the last year.

“Digital transformation is vital for optimizing business operations, advancing initiatives, driving opportunity and combating competitive threats, but it is a massive undertaking that challenges the skills and resources of even the largest organizations,” said Stan Lequin, president, Solutions, Insight North America, in a news release.

The survey also revealed major challenges encountered by organizations at this juncture in their digital transformation journey—underscoring the renewed focus on building a stronger groundwork application environments.

Among the findings:

Nine in ten (91 percent) rely on multiple public cloud providers for different workloads, but respondents continue to grapple with multicloud strategy

In fact, 20 percent also plan to repatriate select public cloud workloads to an on-premises model over the next 12 months. In a related finding, 54 percent of data at respondents’ organizations, on average, now resides in a public or hybrid cloud.

Eighty-six percent report their organization has been impacted by technical debt over the past 12 months

The top areas affected are the ability to innovate (43 percent), meet SLAs (41 percent) and avoid downtime (37 percent).

Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) state that data volumes are growing faster than their ability to manage them

This is leading 64 percent to rank implementation of a data governance program to improve data management as their top data-related objective this year. This links directly to respondents’ view that data governance is the #1 barrier to achieving business value from data.

Half of respondents (51 percent) report having been impacted by a cybersecurity breach over the past 12 months, with 49 percent requiring one week or more to recover

Just 20 percent resolved the issue in one day and 31 percent in multiple days but less than a week.

Nevertheless, respondents indicated significant digital transformation progress in several areas—signaling an opportunity for stragglers to shift their strategies in the coming year.

For example:

• 35 percent of the average organization’s data estate is now driven by edge workloads, with 29 percent of respondents reporting that at least 50 percent of data volumes now reside on the edge. 64 percent expect that to increase in the next 12 months.
• 85 percent indicate their organization is using AI to some degree to drive business insights and/or efficiencies, although only 36 percent report having optimized their use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) enterprisewide with mature processes and capabilities in place.

Download the full report here.

Respondents included 400 senior IT and business decision makers employed at companies with 1,500 or more employees across a wide range of industries.