Electronic Health Reporter

AVANT Communications has released its inaugural State of Disruption study. The AVANT Insight Report is supported with sponsorship from 8×8, Flexential, HOSTING, Masergy, NICE inContact and Oracle Communications — all partners in the master agent’s growing portfolio of best-in-class solutions.

Powered by AVANT’s ecosystem of channel sales professionals, or trusted advisors, the State of Disruption report surveyed 300 U.S. enterprise technology leaders at the manager level and above who lead tech purchasing decisions. AVANT examined four key components of enterprise tech stacks — compute IT infrastructure, voice infrastructure, network infrastructure and cybersecurity — with an eye on how companies are shifting from physical and/or in-house solutions to third-party and/or cloud-based solutions.

“We see the pace of change in IT accelerating with enterprises literally struggling to evolve or die. Trusted Advisors are uniquely equipped to help them navigate the rapid rate of technological change,” said Drew Lydecker, president and co-founder, AVANT. “We’re pleased to release the State of Disruption report as a pulse for forward-thinking IT teams and the experts who enable their decision-making. From networking infrastructure to cybersecurity to breakthrough technologies likes SD-WAN, we are seeing disruption across the board as organizations in all industries are advancing digital transformation.”

The survey reveals the state of digital transformation efforts, the roles trusted advisors and other third parties play in the process, and the rate at which disruptive technologies are replacing legacy solutions, with key findings including:

• 74 percent of companies that see themselves as leaders in innovation rely upon Trusted Advisors for assistance in IT technology decision making
• 58 percent of respondents cited increased agility, flexibility and scalability as the most important reason for IT decision-making
• 74 percent of technology decision-makers are more likely than not to feel a cyberattack could cost them their job

In this report, AVANT also examined the rate at which new technologies are disrupting legacy infrastructure. These findings are presented as a Rate of Disruption Index (RDI), which represents the transformation from legacy to modern digital technologies organizations expect to see from the end of 2018 to the end of 2019; a detailed explanation of the RDI can be found on pages 7 and 8 of the report. Key findings include:

• From pre-SD-WAN networks to SD-WAN: SD-WAN is the most disruptive overall technology category reviewed, with respondents anticipating a 13 percent RDI from 2018 to 2019, with the consulting/business services industry forecasting the greatest level of disruption with a 20 percent RDI
• From in-house servers/data centers to third-party colocation: Migration of company data centers to colocation facilities is most disruptive in companies with $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, with those organizations reporting an RDI of 26 percent
• From in-house PBX/key systems/voice circuits to cloud-based UCaaS: Respondents overall report an RDI of 7 percent to UCaaS, with the greatest disruption in companies with $10 million to $100 million in revenue which see an RDI of 14 percent
• From in-house security resources to third-party managed security services: Adoption of third-party security services is most disruptive in the ecommerce segment, with a 12 percent RDI in this industry
• From physical servers to cloud-based IT infrastructure: Adoption of cloud IT compute infrastructure is also expected to increase more amongst ecommerce companies than any other industry, with a 14 percent RDI amongst ecommerce survey respondents

While SD-WAN is rapidly transforming legacy networks, MPLS is not going away:

• 83 percent of enterprises that use or are familiar with MPLS plan to increase their MPLS network infrastructure this year, including 40 percent who will significantly increase it

However, public broadband continues to penetrate enterprise networks via SD-WAN implementations:

• 63 percent of 2018 SD-WAN networks contained public internet broadband connections, forecasted to grow to 70 percent by the end of 2019

“Eighty-six percent of companies work with Trusted Advisors to help make and execute tech purchasing decisions. That’s a significant amount of enterprises that recognize it is impossible to keep up with the pace of change in IT by yourself. You need a trusted advisor that specializes in understanding the ins and outs of the market to assist you,” said Ian Kieninger, CEO, AVANT. “This latest AVANT Insights report underscores the value of the trusted advisor movement in an era where enterprise survival depends on it.”

To learn more and download the State of Disruption report, visit: www.GoAVANT.net/Disruption.