4 ways to fast-track your digital transformation

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is business success.

Operating in an increasingly digital world, organizations must have several building blocks in place when they embark on a digital transformation strategy. These building blocks relate to a range of business and IT functions, including customer experience, the network, the adoption of software-defined infrastructure, and moving data and applications to the cloud.

Putting all these building blocks together can get complicated quickly, and organizations may lack the in-house skills to make sense of it all. This is where managed service providers (MSPs) like NTT come to the rescue. As a “one-stop shop”, we offer the expertise and support to put organizations on track to digital success. And we achieve this through long-standing global partnerships with the likes of Cisco and Microsoft.

Compromise is not an option

Our technology partnership with Cisco has delivered benefits to our clients for more than three decades. We always look forward to Cisco Live events around the world as an opportunity to emphasize our close connection, and this year we also attended Cisco Live in Las Vegas.

For the conference, we chose four key building blocks of digital success to highlight in the form of concise “pit stops” with our team of experts on the ground.

This came at the same time as our announcements that NTT and Cisco were launching IoT as a service for enterprise customers as well as SPEKTRA (Sentient Platform for Network Transformation), the next generation of our global services platform for our Managed Networks solutions.

4 building blocks of digital transformation

1. Managed services

NTT’s portfolio of managed services, which spans cloud, networking, security, collaboration and more, is in high demand.

Take networks as an example: our 2022–23 Global Network Report shows that 93% of CIOs and CTOs agree (51% strongly) that they’re increasingly looking to partner with specialist MSPs for network-as-a-service solutions.

To manage complex network requirements, they need someone to advise them on how their network is evolving, where they should invest in it, and how best to architect it. Taking this step allows them to bridge in-house skills gaps and keep pace with innovation in networking.

MSPs are experienced in moving organizations smoothly from network planning and design to full operation and maintenance. They can also implement and manage technologies such as predictive analytics, automation and AIOps, all of which deliver new efficiencies to organizations.

• ALSO READ → What is network as a service?

2. Full-stack observability

IT managers are fast realizing that traditional monitoring tools, skills and processes are no longer adequate for the networks and applications they need to track.

Modern applications, which often form part of a multicloud ecosystem, have to be highly agile, but organizations may be stuck with a siloed monitoring approach that delivers limited insights and business value.

Full-stack observability gives organizations unified, real-time visibility of availability and performance all the way through their IT stack – computing, storage, the network, customer-facing applications and more. This makes it much easier for IT teams to find and address anomalies, often before they even affect users or the business.

A 2022 Cisco AppDynamics survey of 1,200 IT professionals found that 88% reported that their organizations’ appetite for full-stack observability had increased over the previous 12 months, and 90% said implementing full-stack observability solutions would be a priority for their organization in the next 12 months.

• ALSO READ → Observability: unlock the value of your business-critical applications

3. Software lifecycle management services

It’s one thing for organizations to choose the best software for their operations, but quite another to keep up with software upgrades and license management across a sprawling estate.

IT teams may soon find they don’t really understand all their software licenses, or that they’re paying for licenses they don't need. This could result in overspending on software or the risk of expensive vendor audits.

The solution lies in software lifecycle management services, which help organizations to consolidate licenses and give them more visibility and control throughout the software lifecycle. This is a great way to reduce management complexities and protect organizations against compliance-related and financial risks.

We give our clients access to the innovation and expertise essential to achieving this “next-level” management of their software-defined infrastructure through our Services Portal, which presents insights into the availability and lifecycle status of their hardware and software.

• ALSO READ → What is software-defined infrastructure?

4. Zero trust services

Never trust; always verify. New cyberthreats appear around the world every day, and it’s becoming more and more complicated to keep organizations’ data and applications secure – especially as hybrid working has upended traditional perimeter-based security.

Zero trust security is part of the new range of defenses that organizations can deploy.

Users or devices used to inherit access to resources when they connected to on-campus networks by plugging in a network cable, for example, or connecting via a virtual private network. But that assumption of trust is no longer sufficient: instead, each and every connection needs to be checked to verify that there is a valid and authorized user behind it.

There is also a higher level of automation than before, tied to the identity of a device or a user. If an employee resigns, for example, their level of access must be automatically decreased.

• ALSO READ → Make zero trust security work for your organization