Digital Infrastructure to drive 49% of business revenue in India by 2027

Lenovo  jointly with AMD recently launched a new InfoBrief titled ‘CIO Technology Playbook 2023’, that aims to highlight the opportunities, challenges, and considerations for CIOs in today’s data-driven economy to help them make the right IT investments. The IDC paper, commissioned by Lenovo and AMD, reveals that with the rapid digital transformation in Asia Pacific, organizations are expected to generate as much as 43% of the revenue from digitally connected products, services, and customer experiences by 2027 (49% for Indian organisations).

The CIO Technology playbook is a study of over 900 CIOs & IT decision-makers in Asia Pacific (AP). The results observed show concerns among CIOs around macroeconomic factors affecting business growth in 2023 and early 2024. For CIOs in India ‘high energy prices’ is the topmost concern in 2023; followed by ‘high inflation’ and ‘growing geopolitical tensions’ as the other key challenge areas.

“With the rise of digital capabilities, businesses are leaning towards data-driven innovation to drive effective business decisions. This means staying on top of rapid innovations in Cloud, Edge, AI/ML that must meet the existing infrastructure with as-a-service offerings. CIOs today have a bigger role to play. We are certain that the CIO Technology Playbook will act as the guide for CIOs to plan and transform their IT,” said Amit Luthra, Managing Director, India, Lenovo ISG. “Covering the Asia Pacific geography, the report notes that organizations in India are at the forefront of leveraging new technologies such as edge innovation with more than 97% of the organizations in India already using or intending to use Edge Computing for their business operations. With such insights and data presented in this report, we hope to inspire and inform Indian businesses as they navigate the rapidly changing and competitive landscape. This report underscores our commitment to leveraging data and innovation to create a better future for all.”

Vinay Sinha, Managing Director, AMD India says “As the digital landscape evolves, it’s crucial for organizations to transform their digital infrastructure. Transforming digital infrastructure is a complex process that requires addressing a range of key challenges and spending imperatives. AMD’s high-performance and adaptive computing solutions have played a key role in the transformation process of organizations and we look forward to tackling future challenges with CIOs and business leaders. The ‘CIO Technology Playbook 2023’ will act as a comprehensive guide to address key issues such as maximizing existing investments, addressing security and compliance concerns, and ensuring scalability and reliability of the digital infrastructure. By having a clear, actionable plan in place, CIOs and business leaders can make informed decisions, drive innovation, and enhance the customer experience.”

The study further highlights that IT decision-makers are actively looking to leverage technology to optimize their supply chains and improve asset utilization, agility, and resilience, enabling them to respond faster to the changing needs of the business. When it comes to business priorities, for 36% of CIOs in Asia driving revenue and profit growth is the top priority, followed by driving higher customer experience and satisfaction, and cost optimization & savings for 32% respondents respectively.

Digital Infrastructure to Significantly Drive Business ROI

Digital infrastructure can help businesses automate tasks, streamline processes, and improve productivity. 85% of Asia Pacific organizations agree that digital infrastructure is essential to achieve business goals. With the advent of multi-clouds and rapidly expanding edge infrastructure CIOs are highly concerned about the growing IT operational complexity and increasing demand for faster response to their ever-changing and evolving business requirements. To accelerate their digital transformation (DX) and modernize legacy IT infrastructure, CIOs called out improving cyber resiliency (ranked #1 by 49% of respondents in Asia) and automating digital infrastructure management (ranked #2 by 47% of respondents in Asia) as the top investment priorities for 2023.

Increased Focus on Hybrid/Multi-Cloud for Cloud/Modernized Mission-Critical Workloads

Over the years, organizations have realized that public cloud does not always offer the best application experience & performance or reduce cost burden from ever-increasing cloud workloads. Additionally, security concerns have urged 63% of Asia Pacific organizations to repatriate workloads back from public cloud to private cloud and/or traditional data centers in the last 12 months. Interestingly, in Japan, only 40% businesses repatriated public workloads to private cloud. Mission-critical applications running in the public cloud in Japan will increase by less than 1 point to 19% this year; compared with the rest of AP markets where it will see a 2% decline.

Hybrid or multi-cloud is poised to gain prominence in Asia over the next 2 to 3 years. AP businesses will continue to run more than 50% of mission-critical workloads on traditional data center infrastructure, systems and platforms, and private cloud infrastructure. Hybrid or a multi-cloud offers highest levels of performance and meets data security & compliance requirements.

Growing Awareness and Adoption of As-a-Service Flexible Models

Mindshare of As-a-Services based consumption models has increased tremendously in AP. India takes the lead as the most aware (91%) market in Asia Pacific. while Korea and Japan which are more technology savvy have a relatively lower awareness level.

Keeping up with the highly volatile, ever-changing business and economic environment, organizations in AP stated cost rationalization and optimization as the key drivers of As-a-Service infrastructure. Consumption-based infrastructure offers flexibility and agility, helping CIOs ease financial burdens and invest more in business innovation. 90% of the organizations in India are using or are planning to leverage As-a-Service flexible IT infrastructure in the next 12 months.

Unified Data Management Means Improved Innovation

Data locked in cloud silos will impede every organization’s ability to successfully digitally transform and thereby meet digital business goals. Efficient data management requires seamless mobility of data in a highly secure manner across the different deployment locations. While there is growing application interdependencies, only 8% businesses are using single data management platform. Over 78% businesses are currently using multiple data management platforms and systems.

Single unified data management platforms offer seamless data mobility across multiple clouds and integrating data across containers and at the edge. Modern single unified data management platforms for myriad data types will be the cornerstone of digitally transforming organizations’ data-innovation journey. CIOs investing in the right platforms and technologies to manage the data explosion at the edge will be in strong stead to build market leadership.

Enhancing customer experience a priority for CIOs

Businesses across verticals such as manufacturing, retail, logistics, transportation, and energy are increasingly focused on delivering a superior customer experience to drive success in the digital economy.

AI will become mainstream in 2023: The application of AI to enhance customer experience is gaining more prominence among CIOs in the AP region. Over 88% of the AP organizations are either using or are planning to use AI/ML applications in the next 12 months.

Organizations are expected to use AI-powered applications for a broad array of business use cases and functions across vertical industries. On the contrary, while Japan is a digitally mature market, fewer organizations (74%) surveyed stated that they are using or planning to use AI applications compared to the Asia/Pacific average.

Edge innovation will be the next frontier in the DX journey: There is a rapid adoption of edge in AP. 88% of the organizations in Asia are either using or planning to use edge computing in the next 12 months for business operations. India takes the lead with 97% of businesses in the market leverage or will use edge innovation.

Through edge, businesses can improve optimal utilization of assets and enhance overall customer experience while ensuring higher uptime or improved reliability. Real-time customer analytics for omni experience; automated quality control and remediation; and asset tracking, geo fencing and management were among the top use cases in AP.

The survey was conducted across 12 key markets in Asia – India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines.