Joe Baguley, CTO EMEA at Broadcom, shares his insights into how businesses can revitalise their IT investment strategies in order to boost innovations
As more businesses are eager to harness new technologies to remain competitive, cloud environments are becoming more complex. This means that businesses are not necessarily making the best use of the technology they have, leading to unnecessary costs and failing IT strategies.
To mitigate this, Joe Baguley, Chief Technology Officer, EMEA at Broadcom, suggests that organisations must ensure that strategy is the key priority moving forward. He explains that technology must have a clear role within an organisation to achieve overall business goals.
“Investment in the right technology solutions should lead to substantial digital transformation, agility to adopt the latest tech and significant competitive advantage, easing the pressure on IT teams,” he says.
Getting the most out of your existing infrastructure
Businesses are continuing to navigate the complex landscape of digital transformation amid rapidly changing digital environments. However, amid the enterprise hype around generative AI (Gen AI), research suggests that many businesses are surprisingly prioritising cloud initiatives over AI investments.
With new and disruptive technologies presenting plenty of challenges, it can be hard for an organisation to come to terms with which tool is most relevant for their operations. IT solutions and platforms often host a wide range of tools, which can make infrastructure complicated and, as Joe explains, IT teams may not even fully realise the extent of the tools and services they can deploy.
“Organisations often find themselves doubling up on some products by procuring additional software to provide functionality they already have but were not even aware of,” Joe states. “By regularly looking at your existing IT investments more holistically and as one, integrated system, you may be surprised at how many tools you already own and how seamlessly they can operate.”
He advises: “With a more holistic view of your toolkit, you’re better positioned to get full value and return on investments.”
Business leaders uncertain over their tech investments (Research: Orgvue)
- 61% say they expect AI to replace people in their organisation
- 48% are unsure how they will manage developments to optimise their use of technology
- 80% plan to reskill employees to use AI in the workplace
Whilst a bespoke tech stack is often viewed as the ideal scenario, Joe advises that this can result in tech investments that consist of specific tools that are joined together to make something different. This often results in products that don’t often work well together and are challenging to maintain.
“It’s time for some radical simplification,” Joe notes. “There are solutions and platforms out there that can be bought off the shelf and deployed rapidly. Solutions that are industrialised, reliable and scalable – and can deliver faster innovation with more value to customers.”
Boosting AI and cloud strategies to innovate better
Innovation comes in many forms for a business, but businesses will benefit from considering how to best unlock future opportunities. IT strategies could start to struggle if they are dictated by the most recent trends or new products.
Instead, Joe highlights that companies could focus on creating an environment that enables business operations to be flexible and deliver true value with their services.
Joe Baguley: CTO at VMware (Image: VMware)
“Often, innovation is associated with a rush to public cloud networks and more recently an impulse to buy the latest Gen AI tool,” Joe explains. “But innovation can happen on-premises or in a private cloud environment too, with the same level of agility but better focus on cost, data sovereignty and security.”
He adds: “All you need is the right solution, one that has built-in resilience for non-stop operations, threat prevention, and fast recovery from cyber threats – allowing you to layer innovation on top. Just like you don’t build your own operating systems, you should not be building your own cloud platforms – you should be focusing on innovating above that, where the real differentiation is.”
