It has been said that an organisation’s strategic assets can be identified as anything it owns that is rare or valuable. Good examples are the company’s reputation, its superior managerial skills, exclusive technological capabilities, levels of customer focus, unique corporate culture and the degree of brand approval in the marketplace.
These intangible assets often represent many years of hard work, skills development and expertise advancement − and a laser-like focus on regular and vital incremental successes. There is little doubt that they are rare and valuable assets.
But what about tangible or physical assets? Equipment, buildings and inventory, while they are the principal assets that companies use to produce products and services, may have less lasting value as equipment degrades and has to be replaced, buildings age and can fall into disuse while inventory is only useful while there is a market for it.
There is an exception. The network plays a key role in supporting the company’s work ethic and therefore its reputation. The technology underpinning it facilitates superior management and the user efficiencies it engenders strengthen the organisation’s technological capabilities and contribute towards a refined customer focus, all of which help define and build a positive corporate culture.
The efficiency of the network also makes a meaningful impact on the all-important positioning of the brand which is tightly linked to on-going marketing and sales successes.
The network plays a key role in supporting the company’s work ethic and therefore its reputation.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that some describe the corporate network as the lifeblood of the business. From this perspective, it falls, uniquely, between tangible and ethereal as an asset. Its significant value, however, is clearly defined.
If the network is deemed a valuable corporate asset, should asset managers be mindful of the Forbes Group’s warning that “[we] are slow to realise it, [but] the assets of yesterday are quickly becoming the liabilities of today”?
Perhaps managers should take the advice of those who suggest that, strategically, the network should be viewed as a “whole life investment” and trade-offs between capital and operational expenditure (capex and opex) should be seen through a “total expenditure” (totex) prism?
Against this backdrop, business executives are today challenged to do more with less, particularly in terms of IT resources. Planning therefore takes on a cloak of added importance, as does the search for new opportunities making use of what is referred to as the “digital transformation”.
According to the Salesforce cloud platform, the digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes to meet changing business and market requirements.
Obviously, as organisations continue on the path of digital transformation, the appropriate networking capabilities to support their journey will be required.
It’s a good bet that many IT managers are currently unaware how their networking needs will evolve. The certainty is that they will evolve. As a result, there is an increasing need to future-proof the corporate network.
One of the challenges to overcome will be the traditional close association of particular hardware to unique operating systems. This makes it difficult to repurpose hardware to meet the demands of the digital transformation.
In this light, IT managers often have to make a tough choice between the cost and time associated with a “forklift” network upgrade, or coming up with substantially revised or adapted − and costly − plans to accommodate their existing network infrastructure to meet future needs. Neither is a great option, particularly in times of economic constraint.
Is there a solution? Can today’s IT managers have their cake and eat it too? Can they upgrade their networks without having to go through a costly rip-and-replace exercise?
There are those who claim to have this “holy grail” within reach today. It is the concept of universal hardware technology.
It’s a technology that, in essence, represents a new philosophy central to which is a common set of tools, libraries, frameworks and compilers that address a wide variety of solutions in a “silicon agnostic” way.
In today’s digital world, organisations frequently have to choose between different operating systems to meet constantly changing network demands. This can be a complex task, particularly as hardware is often replaced when the operating system changes.
The universal hardware concept addresses this and other issues. For example, in addition to selecting a desired operating system, users can switch operating systems at any time without having to purchase new hardware or a new licence. Proponents of the concept say this will be true for both wired and wireless networks.
It should permit organisations to optimise hardware investments by applying hardware to multiple use cases while permitting changes in software systems or feature sets as required. Additional hardware asset value can be realised through the realisation of new levels of business agility, flexibility and adaptability.
If the concept, as outlined, has a key feature it is to reduce obsolescence by allowing users to progressively adopt new, modern software solutions while preserving and even redeploying existing hardware, resulting in significant totex cost savings.
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