For business owners and C-suite executives, digital transformation means far more than system integration or migration. It’s achieving an enterprise-wide state where connected functions accelerate business activities, processes and competencies in agile and innovative ways. The transformation is driven by its promise to power revenue growth, improve the customer experience and outpace the competition.
Digital transformation is by no means easy, as proven by recent high-profile failures at recognised and respected companies. The hype of digital transformation from consultants and software publishers can mislead when it focuses only on the desired end-state and minimises the true amount of effort, resources and budget required to reach that state.
Make no mistake, migrating from stable, highly customised, on-premise systems to cloud systems will always be time intensive, expensive and functionally incomplete.
No matter where you are in your digital transformation journey, you do have options such as third-party software support that can address these challenges and improve the odds of success. Providers such as Spinnaker Support facilitate your transformation by supporting your on-premise enterprise software, saving money for innovation projects and giving you control over the speed and direction of your transformation.
Customers gain control of their technology roadmap because Spinnaker Support offers the entire range of services
According to research firm Gartner, the third-party Oracle and SAP market has been expanding over the past decade. Thousands of global businesses are balking at the increased costs of support, the decreased personalised service and the forced march to premature cloud solutions imposed by Oracle and SAP. Third-party support vendors have proved their merit, and businesses are actively using this service to help facilitate and fund digital transformation.
That’s good news because digital transformation does not come cheap. A recent survey from Altimeter Digital found 44 per cent of companies allocate an annual budget of $15 million or more to the effort. With a switch to third-party SAP or Oracle support, IT leaders can immediately reallocate significant savings on maintenance fees towards transformational projects that require new software, hardware, cloud services, technical staff, training, system integrators or consultants.
“Third-party support directly contributes to the success of system migrations and updates,” says Iain Saunderson, chief technical officer at Spinnaker Support. “Smart global organisations are engaging with third-party support vendors because it provides their IT teams with cost-effective, responsive, day-to-day support for existing systems, while freeing them to concentrate their full attention on the transformation initiative.”
With third-party support, organisations also have complete strategic flexibility. For example, some Spinnaker Support customers take a cautious, phased cloud migration approach instead of a riskier rip-and-replace scenario for the entire infrastructure. Others choose to keep their options open rather than be forced down the software vendor’s cloud roadmap.
Still others forgo an upgrade or migration and instead focus on improving the customer experience through
new mobile solutions, internet of things, analytical tools and cognitive thinking products.
Customers gain control of their technology roadmap because Spinnaker Support offers the entire range of services, from support to managed services to strategic consulting. This includes lift-and-shift consulting capabilities to transport enterprise applications from on-premise to public cloud, plus cloud managed services to maintain those applications once they’ve been relocated.
One customer, a leading European telecommunications provider, needed to migrate its Oracle E-Business Suite from an on-premise private cloud to Amazon Web Services. Spinnaker Support consulted on system design, installed and implemented system elements, and managed and supported both systems, which it continues to do today.
These are just a few ways in which Spinnaker Support has helped more than 1,100 customers in the past decade. Our experienced software experts are embraced as a true extension of the customer’s internal IT team. As digital transformation projects move forward, we provide a wealth of technology advice to help ensure interoperability, security and strategic roadmap planning.
For more information please visit spinnakersupport.com, call 0208 242 1785, or email info@spinnakersupport.com
