Let’s look at how digital tools are used in business. I’ll quote from TechRepublic: A survey by Salesforce’s MuleSoft division shows that trying to achieve transformation by scooping up applications might not get you there if the strategy doesn’t include using application programming interfaces, automation, and other methods to integrate them.
Based on responses to the survey conducted in October and November 2022, businesses increased the number of applications they use by 10% in the 12 months prior to over 1,060 on average. However, fewer than one-third of those apps were integrated, creating data silos, rising costs, duplicated work, productivity bottlenecks, and disconnected experiences, according to MuleSoft.
Thirty-six percent of those surveyed — all of whom work at an organization with at least 1,000 employees and hold at least a managerial position in an IT department — said integrating siloed apps and data was their biggest digital transformation challenge.
Putting that in context, Forrester released a new report on IT spending — Enterprise IT spending in the U.S. will increase in 2023, but the growth rate will slow to 5.4%, down from 7.4% in 2022. Software is a primary driver of tech spending growth, increasing by 8.3% this year, the report said, to 42% of total tech spend, up from 34% last year.
Why do we care?
Don’t be thrown off by the size of the customers surveyed here; instead, focus on the problem. Too many applications which aren’t pulled together to create a coherent whole. This is a common problem – and probably will worsen with increased software spend.
I’m always amused by how much time providers spend worrying about hardware programs when the money is clearly in software. Beyond that, the real money is in those integration services, and the “biggest challenge” is code for the highest value services.