Survey: Execs Value Digital Business Model, Aren't Confident on Execution

While service provider, IT and business executives are supportive of digital transformations, only a small percent believe they are adept enough to do so.

According to a new survey by Unisys Corp. (NYSE: UIS) and IDG Research, nearly 72% of the survey respondents saw a digital business model as "critical" or "very important" to their success, but just 15% viewed their organizations as being nimble enough to implement a digital model.

When Unisys/IDC did a similar study in October of last year, 65% of the survey respondents said that a digital business model was critical or very important for an organization to modify its IT processes and resources.

The survey polled 175 IT and business executives in the US and Europe with 1,000 or more employees. In the survey, the executives were asked about "initiatives their organizations are undertaking to capitalize on the convergence of social, cloud, mobility, data analytics, internet of things (IoT) and security to drive new business models and engage, enable and support an increasingly tech-savvy workforce and customer base."

The survey respondents saw the value of the cloud as a key component in their IT infrastructures with 55% saying they've already deployed in a cloud environment. While 88% of those surveyed cited cloud security as top priority, only 32% said they had made significant progress.

Executives in the survey said they were reaping the rewards of their digital initiatives to date with improvements over the last 12 months in the following areas: data security (56%), user experience with applications and services (44%), IT efficiency (42%) and infrastructure performance/availability (41%).

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation