Nearly three-quarters of C-suite see visibility into network as business driver

Research from digital performance technology provider Riverbed has revealed a strong correlation between effective technology and company health among C-suite and IT decision-makers (ITDMs).

The study, Rethink possible: visibility and network performance – the pillars of business success, details the attitudes about innovation, productivity, human behaviour and IT capabilities held by more than 1,700 tech executives across six countries. It aimed to understand the challenges companies face in driving creativity, innovation and productivity, and provide guidance and solutions to digital enablement.

In particular, it set out to shed light on the complex road to achieving digital performance, highlighting the opinions of the C-suite, business leaders and ITDMs in their pursuit of digital excellence and discussing the technology priorities that will deliver business growth.

The topline finding of the survey was that more than 70% of C-suite decision-makers believe business innovation and staff retention are driven by improved visibility into network and application performance. As many as 86% of C-suite and ITDMs, and 87% of business decision-makers (BDMs), said digital performance is increasingly critical to business growth.

By contrast, three-quarters of the groups surveyed in the report have felt frustrated by current network performance, with IT infrastructure given as the key reason for poor performance. This problem was found to be exacerbated by a lack of full and consistent visibility, with one in three ITDMs reporting that that they do not have full visibility over applications, their networks and/or end-users.

More than 80% of all leaders (82% C-suite, 84% BDMs and ITDMs) agreed with the statement that businesses must rethink what is possible to survive in today’s unpredictable world, and technology needs to be an enabler in the process.

Business priorities and challenges were said to be evolving, and the survey suggested the technology that businesses rely on needs to advance too. More than three-quarters (76%) of ITDMs acknowledged that their IT infrastructure will have to change dramatically in the next five years to support new ways of doing business.

And almost half of the C-suite (49%) thought slow-running and outdated technology is directly impacting the growth of their businesses. This, said Riverbed, highlighted the importance of implementing new technology to drive productivity, creativity and innovation.

Some 95% of all respondents recognised that innovation and breaking boundaries is crucial to business success, emphasising the need to embrace new technology. Riverbed suggested this may be why 80% of BDMs and 77% of the C-suite believe that investing in next-generation technology is vital.

“All leaders recognise that visibility, optimised network infrastructure, and the ability to accelerate cloud and SaaS [software as a service] performance are the next frontier in business success,” said Colette Kitterhing, senior director UK&I, Riverbed Technology. “Given this, it is time the C-suite, business decision leaders and IT decision-makers came together to invest in the right solutions, prioritise measurement, and place visibility and infrastructure at the top of their agenda.”