Digital Transformation 2.0? IT Teams Look Ahead to 2024

Renewed digital transformation plans and shifting internal IT resources are opening the door for technology advisors to play a bigger role with their business customers, Telarus concluded in its 2023 Tech Trends Report.

Telarus' recently unveiled Tech Trends Report covers a wide swath of data from both end-user customers and the technology advisor (agent) partners that serve them. The report includes Constellation Research's survey of 150 "digital CXOs" – which Constellation considers as C-suite executives that handle digital responsibilities – and Redpoint Research that surveyed more than 500 Telarus technology advisors.

Telarus at its annual partner summit earlier this year teased some of the results from Constellation's survey. Notably, Constellation identified a yearning and a habit from digital IT purchasers to rely on a third-party source for their procurement. Some 93% of enterprise CIOs rely on "trusted technology advisors" or desire to leverage them. However, a much smaller subset of those buyers were officially turning to a channel partner — let alone a technology advisor.

But Constellation vice president and principal analyst Dion Hinchcliffe said the gap represents an opportunity for partners. Many partners agree, stating that they intend to take the place of large consultancies in the enterprise space.

“Channel is underutilized. There’s an open opportunity, and there’s a hunger for it,” Hinchcliffe said earlier this year. “[Customers] just don’t clearly identify it as much as they could.”

Constellation Research's Dion Hinchcliffe

As technology advisors and technology services brokerages (TSBs) such as Telarus that work with them seek to move up-market, end user IT departments are navigating a dynamic world.

While people have been talking about "digital transformation" for years, the trend appears to be re-emerging in 2023 with the widespread popularity of generative AI solutions. For agent/advisor partners, who have for years made their business of migrating customers off on-premise legacy hardware, that's good news.

However, the opportunity will require education and nuance. As Telarus executives noted to Channel Futures, technology platforms are only one component of digital transformation. Businesses are mulling who will manage their technology and often deciding on a complex "fusion teams" approach that combines internal, vendor and MSP teams.

The pitch from the technology advisor community is that they can help these groups work together.

Telarus' Koby Phillips

"If you're taking a company that's trying to transition and move everything to a managed service provider, it's going to take a little bit longer because you lose that internal goodness of understanding why things are the way they are, where the current landscape is, and how do I transition it?" said Koby Phillips, vice president of Telarus' cloud practice. "You need that collaborator from the internal team to help bring in the managed services team. And now you're in a co-managed or hybrid IT type of environment. And it's a different skill set. It takes a lot of pressure off the organization to have to do everything themselves.”

Above: Telarus CEO Adam Edwards talks with Channel Futures editorial director Craig Galbraith at the 2023 Channel Futures Leadership Summit in Miami Beach, Florida.

Phillips and Telarus chief revenue officer commented on other findings in the Telarus Tech Trends Report in an interview with Channel Futures.

See the six images above for key takeaways from their research.