Oct 22, 2021

The Increasing Relevance of Continuous Intelligence in a Covid-19 Era Study reveals most cloud mature digital companies are seriously considering the benefits of continuous intelligence (CI) and are enthusiastic about accelerating their rollouts at a high rate. Covid-19 has driven many businesses to accelerate their digital transformation activities to address the impact on where, how, and when people live and work. But a new U.S. study by King Brown Partners (KBP), commissioned by Sumo Logic reveals most cloud mature digital companies are seriously considering the benefits of continuous intelligence (CI) and are enthusiastic about accelerating their rollouts at a high rate. The study distinguished between cloud mature and cloud transforming respondents. Cloud mature businesses are digital cloud-native, with established cloud strategies plus a “formal governance structure to consistently measure KPIs to improve cloud and hybrid cloud capabilities.” Cloud transforming businesses are those somewhere on the pathway to developing or embracing the strategies and KPIs . CI is a new category of software that bridges real-time data from many discrete applications, services, and infrastructure into a single, cloud-native analytics platform. It’s most valuable to businesses trying to navigate how they’ll derive operational success and revenue from digital transformation, modern applications, and cloud computing. CI is already being used to help businesses make more reliable, secure applications and digital services because they have the real-time data and insights to address the technology and collaboration challenges required for modern business. Here are some of the key takeaways on how businesses and various professionals perceive the rollout and relevance of CI: Overall enthusiasm around adopting CI remains strong. An overwhelming majority of both cloud mature and transforming businesses agreed that CI would benefit their company in meaningful ways. Interest in adopting CI is highest among cloud mature companies, regardless of whether Covid-19 accelerated, had no impact on, or hindered their overall digital transformation plans. CI is more relevant across the board in cloud mature companies. While 62 percent of EDMs agreed that CI is the need-to-embrace approach to data for driving revenue, 67 percent of IT operations, 69 percent of security, and 71 percent of DevOps/SRE professionals agreed, indicating that practitioners are very much in agreement with their executive counterparts. CI is most relevant to executive decision-makers (EDMs) in cloud-transforming companies. 71 percent of respondents in this category strongly agree that “CI is the new approach to data that many companies will need to embrace as they become more software-driven to drive revenue.” IT operations, security, and DevOps/SRE professionals were less aligned on the value of CI. The study transitions into four specific value propositions of CI: access to real-time data, improved executive decision-making, big data mining, and shared accountability for the end-user experience. Cloud mature businesses are more bullish on the overall value of CI. Respondents in this category agreed more strongly with the specific value propositions of CI than their cloud transforming counterparts and agreed more strongly with the sentiment that they’ll gain “speed and agility” from using continuous intelligence throughout their business. Businesses were most optimistic about the value of providing access to real-time data throughout their organization. 74 percent of cloud mature, and 58 percent of cloud transforming businesses strongly agree that data access is where they’ll likely see the most immediate impact, leading other perceived value propositions of CI. While executives look forward to leveraging continuous intelligence and analysis in driving strategic decisions, there’s also clear evidence that organizations will try to enable people at all levels to make faster, more informed decisions. Respondents were most aligned on the value of big data mining. 62 percent and 53 percent of cloud mature and cloud transforming businesses, respectively, strongly believe that their teams could use more sophisticated data analytics as a competitive advantage. The study, conducted in Q4 of 2020 by King Brown Partners and commissioned by Sumo Logic, was derived from 796 professionals with cloud management and leadership responsibilities. View the study’s infographic below or download here Tagged