Too much. That’s an accurate assessment of IT environments in most, if not all, enterprises. They have more data center space than they need and more servers than they can use at any point in time. They have more software operating systems, middleware, and enterprise licenses than necessary. They also have more of the wrong resources and never enough of the right resources in application development and maintenance. The as-a-service movement seeks to address this, but the journey to get there isn’t as simple as it appears.
So how much overcapacity is present in enterprises? At every level there seems to be a 25-50 percent overcapacity in IT. Since IT varies from 1-7 percent of revenues, the 25-50 percent overcapacity is in the range of 40 percent overcapacity overall.
As we at Everest Group look at applying as-a-service principles into IT environments, we see an opportunity to remove 40 percent of the IT cost by eliminating the wastage in service capacity. But the journey to achieve this as-a-service cost benefit is neither quick nor easy.
Renegotiating enterprise licenses takes time and often requires waiting until they expire. Reconceptualizing the infrastructure and application support is also complicated and requires a resolute effort and substantial patience.
It can take a year to three years to complete the journey. But the benefits are very substantial, starting with a 40 percent cost reduction in IT — a heady prize for the journey. In a future blog I’ll discuss other benefits.
