3 Key Takeaways from DTX London Conference
I recently had the pleasure of joining colleagues, partners and industry peers, live and in-person at the 2021 DTX Conference in London. It was great to see everyone come together again to discuss the future of digital transformation and hear how others are navigating their cloud journeys.
The keynotes and presentations were engaging—and while many digital transformation topics were debated, I found three main takeaways from DTX London.
The Best Migration Method: Lift and Shift vs. Build Anew
A big question for enterprises—large and small—is what the most cost-effective way is to migrate to the cloud. Many of the mid-size companies we talk to and work with tend to take the lift-and-shift approach, and then refactor once they’ve moved to the cloud. This is often a less expensive (initially) and faster way to get to the cloud and enables them to incrementally refactor workloads to take advantage of new cloud-native technologies over time.
However, it was interesting to note that some of the larger enterprises at the show are taking a different approach. With the time throughout COVID to evaluate their strategies, they’re addressing the challenge of outdated legacy infrastructure and associated technical debt head-on—and getting rid of it altogether. They’re throwing out old infrastructure and building anew on the cloud—and then transferring all their data and customers over. The reason? They’re saving billions of dollars in the long run and have more time to invest in the business.
Of course, it makes sense as these companies have vastly more complex, decades-old infrastructure that, quite frankly, would be more expensive to refactor than just starting from scratch.
How to Get a Handle on Security
Amid the recent high-profile cyberattacks, it’s no surprise that security was a top theme at the conference. Enterprises are acutely aware of the growing threats and know they need to double down on security and compliance—especially given the events of the last 18 months. Companies are still catching up from the massive changes brought on by COVID. In the rush to support employees at home, security often took a back seat. One survey found that 51% of companies experienced IT pains during the transition, and 46% of respondents indicated concern over increased security and compliance risks. These concerns have been well-founded. A 2021 report from security firm Mimecast found that during the pandemic, email-based threats soared by 64%.
As companies have adjusted to the “new normal” and look ahead at 2022, they’re taking a closer look at their security posture, identifying the gaps in their infrastructure and evaluating what kind of expertise is needed to fill those gaps.
Getting Started on the Cloud Journey
With the tech news media awash in discussions of the latest cloud-native technologies and strategies, it can be easy to forget that the large majority of companies are still getting started on their cloud journeys. And that was very much reflected in many of the discussions we had at the show. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy highlighted this very point at last year’s AWS re:Invent, commenting, “If you look at the global IT segment…96% of those dollars are spent on-premises, not in the cloud.” While many companies have accelerated their plans to the cloud, this data point still holds true today. I think what’s changed, however, is that these plans are no longer on the future roadmap—they are very much front and center. What we’ve seen is that companies have used the last 18 months as an opportunity to evaluate their migration plans, and really examine what aspects of their infrastructure they can modernize. They’re ready to move forward and are looking for expertise and strategies to help them make those plans a reality in 2022.
To learn how companies are applying some of these takeaways from DTX London and accelerating their digital transformation and cloud journey, read our blog post: Six Companies Solve Their Toughest IT Challenges—From Migration Deadlines to Outdated ERPs.