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How Digital Engineering Enables Resilient IT Decisions

Given the current economic environment, all business and technology decision-makers must come together in support of a cohesive strategy for ongoing information technology (IT) investment. In order to deliver custom digital products and services, resilient organizations will pivot from an 'operational mindset' to a more 'market-driven mindset'.

As IT and Operations Technology (OT) converge, companies will focus on using digital business capabilities to improve processes via better instrumentation, infrastructure, integration and insight.

To help organizations expand to the OT buyer and become resilient decision-makers, International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new 'Future of Operations' (FoO) framework.

Digital Engineering Market Development

By 2025, intelligent enterprises will see a 100 percent increase in productivity, resulting in half the response time of peers due to the ability to anticipate market and operational changes and 25 percent increase in success rates of new digital product or service introductions.

IDC defines resilient decision making as having the ability to use all available data and information to rapidly and effectively make decisions that keep your operations aligned with customer expectations and demands.

Traditionally, operational data has been siloed by both technology and organization. Systems have typically been in place to pull critical financial and compliance information from operations by the IT organization.

And those same systems push down orders and demands as gathered by the IT systems. It is then up to the operation to have processes and systems in place to turn that flow into an executed business function.


"Digital Engineering is the piece that companies have been missing to become more resilient and to tightly align operations with their customers' needs," said Kevin Prouty, group vice president at IDC. "The convergence of IT and OT is the driving force behind digital engineering and the resiliency at its core."

To succeed with a market-driven mindset, IDC defines five key tenants:
  • Evolve beyond continuous improvement, lean, and six sigma to resiliency and market focus.
  • Embrace complexity in products, services, and markets while minimizing complications.
  • Adapting to changing markets and demands while keeping the core operational purpose.
  • Use digital capabilities to build a resilient organization and operation.
  • Develop a converged IT and OT function into Digital Engineering.

Outlook for Digital Engineering Methodology Adoption

According to the IDC assessment, forward-thinking organizations will leverage the Future of Operations framework to structure and scope their future of operations initiatives. Key decision-makers will be able to define the technologies and related services essential to the new market-driven operational models.

Furthermore, technology suppliers and IT vendors can use the framework to ensure their solutions are meeting the demands of the enterprises that are and will be undergoing operations transformation efforts. In summary, there is no digital transformation without IT operations transformation.

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