The Foundation of an Information Infrastructure Trend for Business Value

Executive Summary

CIOs have identified “driving business innovation” as a key strategic goal for the next three to five years, according to CIO magazine’s 2010 “State of the CIO” survey. In the more immediate future, “developing IT strategy to accelerate business goals” and “aligning IT and business goals” are among the most frequently cited (66 percent) IT management priorities for the year ahead. One supporting trend that is gaining traction among CIOs is managed print services. This highly evolved level of document management has grown out of printing services to encompass output management, change management, business process improvement and collaboration. These functions, all encompassed within managed print services, are essential to the flow of information throughout the modern enterprise.

Organizations are more receptive than ever to hosted or externally provided infrastructurelevel services. While IT leaders indicate 22 percent of their organization’s IT services are provided by third parties, including outsourcers and cloud-service providers, they anticipate that number will increase to 34 percent in three to five years. Managed print services will be a major aspect of this shift. Managed print services brings a full range of document management capabilities and technologies to the table, which help IT leaders streamline the entire document lifecycle, increase efficiency and productivity, and cut costs.

Introduction

CIOs and other IT leaders continue to deal with the relentless drive to do more with less, the ongoing efforts to better align IT strategy to promote business goals, and the process of staying ahead of the sweeping changes in the technology landscape. The need to streamline processes and cut costs is incessant. These needs and goals align well with a services-oriented delivery model like managed print services.

CIOs see technology delivered as a service as the trend most likely to have a significant impact on the CIO role over the next three to five years. This change in expectations reveals an enterprise technology climate ready to more fully adopt the services model. Market leaders have sufficiently addressed concerns about viability, delivery, dependability, security, and of course, ongoing costs.

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