Businesses are becoming sophisticated in how they consume IT. The business user is starting to drive consumption through self-service and consumerization initiatives. The smartphone has led this evolution and Enterprise IT is now beginning to catch up. In this article, 1E co-founder and CEO, Sumir Karayi, looks at his top four trends in Enterprise IT.

An End to Waste

IT departments want a fairer deal from their vendors. Organizations know they are paying large sums for IT equipment, software, and services that provide little or no value. Yet, they don’t have the tools to separate the useful from the useless, and thus are left with no choice but to keep on signing cheques for vendors that are often far in excess to what they actually need. Broadly speaking this issue is gaining significant momentum.
We will see tools like 1E’s which measure waste in IT and automate it out. We have saved our customers $2bn to date, in removing servers, software, energy waste, and wasted resource. In particular, we are investing 1E’s energy in attacking waste in the data center. There is significant software waste and some of the vendors really do not behave in a fair manner to their customers. The answer is the having access to the right information, and automation that removes technology which is providing no benefit. The data center reminds me of the corporate desktop 20 years ago; too much is manual, the tools are still very basic, and people simply do not know have a handle on what they have and are paying for.

Bring Your Own

BYO is a trend that is here to stay as home and work computing becomes ever more integrated. Only 2% of people can leverage Bring Your Own Computer (BYOPC), because it has been too complex and too costly with existing technologies. We are fixing that with a new solution, MyWorkNow, later this year.

Getting Security Right

We all have been reminded of the importance of IT security through recent well publicised breaches. What’s really interesting is that whilst data breaches – whether personal or corporate data – can be so costly, the security market have been focussed on hugely complex tools and technology but have really not taken care of simple things that companies can do to stop 90% of the breaches. We are seeing signs that things may be improving on this front, but there is still much to do, particularly with the growth in BYOD and BYOPC. We are trialling a free benchmark to help organizations get these security basics right.

A Balanced Approach to Business

We have found that employees now are looking for much more than money or security. They want to feel they are making a difference and want to be inspired. Thankfully inspiration is something we are not lacking in. 1E pioneered Green IT fifteen years ago, when no one was interested in it as a field; we have already saved our customers over $1bn in energy costs. Now we are now helping IT itself become more sophisticated and this requires innovation as again we are entering uncharted territory. It’s a bit like the hybrid and electric car revolution; we believe everyone in IT will want to consume less to do more.
A balanced approach to running the business, that is the balance between developing world class technology, helping our customers be successful and making a positive impact in the communities we belong to, is always a challenge. I believe we should not forget our part in giving back.