How CXOs can move beyond 'managing IT' towards innovation

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The word ‘autonomous’ mostly brings to mind autonomous cars and the kind of technology used in infrastructure -- windows that self-adapt to the light levels to maintain room temperatures, indoor gardens, and so on. But how exactly will autonomous technology transform the IT function in an organisation?

Let’s start by understanding why there is a pressing need today, for IT that can manage itself.

As we’ve often heard from experts before, technology should be viewed as a means to an end. Yet, IT teams in a number of enterprises end up spending a huge amount of time, efforts and resources dedicated to just ‘managing’ IT, potentially holding back the pace of innovation in their company. How, then, can CXOs avoid the risk of falling into the ‘managing IT’ trap and put more hands on the ‘innovation’ deck? The solution lies in an autonomous approach to IT, where we empower technology to take care of itself.

Is technology serving people? By and large, it’s the other way around in most cases
Take the modern enterprise world for instance, where IT systems that have become critical to the smooth functioning of a business. They have just become more complex, requiring extra effort by the IT team to ensure optimal performance. Instead of helping, such IT systems are making it all the more harder for businesses to align to market dynamics or seize new growth opportunities.

What has this led to? More resources and budgets being assigned to manage the tools we need, instead of designing and utilising the products and services that we actually want.

It should be the other way around, right? If only so many talented IT professionals were able to spend less time and effort in maintaining technology, and instead spend even more time creating additional value for the business? Imagine the pace and scale of innovation this can lead to, giving the business a clear competitive advantage. From a consumer standpoint, imagine how many more cool, user friendly products/services can be made available, if IT gets freed to focus on innovation alone?

Is there was a way we could empower IT teams with the freedom to focus only on the tasks that will add the most value to the business?

The promise of autonomous technology
Autonomous technology can redefine the way in which organisations currently manage their IT infrastructure - sensing the need for additional memory, more computational capabilities, optimising the infrastructure on demand in real time, freeing up the human resources to a large extent to focus on driving more value for the business.

Take for instance tasks such as administration, integration and security, which are effectively technology-based. In the world of analytics too, from simple prediction models, we’re now seeing increased play for advanced machine learning, deep learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and so on to identify problem areas better and to design the most appropriate solutions.

Autonomous technology enables the systems that underpin these tasks to manage themselves, and lets people get back to performing the tasks that genuinely add value in their organisation.

Freedom from technology servitude
Autonomous technology represents the next great leap in technology’s evolution, through harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform the functional tasks that machines are best suited to, and by processing vast volumes of data at speeds that no human could match.

Previous technology waves, such as the internet or the cloud, have actually served to introduce greater complexity into organisations. Autonomous technology differs by bringing to life the idea that technology can manage itself without human intervention. This time it is machines that are doing the work – not people.

Autonomous technology doesn’t hide complexity behind new technology. It resolves complexity. The benefits of autonomous technology are both incremental and revolutionary. It can drive efficiency in existing systems management, freeing up human resources and generating quick wins that can be reinvested in further implementations. Staff now have the time to use their knowledge of system and functions to proactively change and improvise them.

They can also begin to consider and design new processes and practices, and step away from managing backend systems in favour of focusing on the front-end applications and services that matter most to employees and customers. Furthermore, autonomous technology also delivers improved capabilities to implement these new ideas, by automating tasks such as integration and security. Prototypes can be delivered securely much faster, slashing time-to-value and helping to meet rapidly changing market dynamics and customer expectations.

The result is the ability to meet business requirements with new initiatives not previously considered, at speeds never before possible.

By freeing itself up from the service of IT, the IT function can become a true partner to the organisation. Ultimately, autonomous technology can lead to a future where there is no discernible difference between IT and the business – they are converged.

Accelerating information into action
Over time organisations may find they have little choice but to adopt autonomous technology, as market pressures compress the allowable time between gathering and utilising data, and the volumes and velocity of the data become overwhelming. With autonomous systems able to collate, slice and dice data at unprecedented speeds and make available only the insights that matter to the right decision makers, all in a secure manner, ‘insight-as-a-service’ will become more valuable than before.

Inclusive innovation: Faster and more effective for businesses
In putting technology at the heart of organisations, we have displaced the two groups that really should be there – employees and customers. What’s worse, we have made people slaves to technology, and forced workers to engage in repetitive tasks that offer no greater value than simply ensuring the technology performs the way it is supposed to.

No more.

It is time for organisations to get back to doing what they do best - providing the great service that their customers expect. And the only way to do that is to ensure that their people are free to focus on that task. Autonomous technology delivers the freedom necessary to make that vision a reality.

Is your business ready for the autonomous era?

Shalini Warrier is the COO at Federal Bank & Premalakshmi R  is the Head-Cloud Platform business at Oracle India.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.