Digital Transformation for the Modern Midmarket: Red Paper series

IT trends belong to one of two main categories. Some, like Linux or cloud, refer to a product or product category that changes IT strategies by providing breakthrough capabilities. Others are statements of IT strategy, highlighting opportunities to directly connect IT capabilities to broader business objectives.

Digital transformation (DX) is an example of this second type of trend. DX, according to a report by global research leader Techaisle, is the integration of digitalized processes to achieve enterprise-wide automation spanning multiple functions; modernization of current processes and supporting infrastructure to achieve previously-unattainable or unimaginable business outcomes.

A Techaisle survey of nearly 900 US midmarket firms found that demand for digital transformation is acute within midmarket organizations: over 80% are ‘holistic’ or ‘inclusive’ in the application of digital transformation to their business strategies. But midmarket firms face unique challenges: they lack the operational scope and staffing resources of larger firms, but still need to balance legacy environments with the desire to pursue next-generation solutions.

Constrained by limited resources, midmarket firms often turn to the channel for IT support. But the partner community itself is undergoing a transformation, as leading firms look for ways to move beyond IT projects to relationships where they can provide executive insight into the many ways that technology can be used to address core business challenges.

DX provides an ideal context for alignment between a midmarket eager to capitalize on business technology innovation and a channel that is determined to work with both IT and business management clients. On the one hand, DX offers clear, definable advantages in areas that are critical to midmarket executives: operational excellence, employee empowerment, product innovation and customer intimacy. At the same time, midmarket firms need suppliers who can develop and deliver on roadmaps that connect the development of IT capabilities and integration of technology potential with process opportunity. DX defines a market need that benefits both advanced channel members and their midmarket customers – and Red Hat has commissioned a series of Red Papers to help its partners to build the competencies required to capitalize on this need and to help their midmarket accounts to use DX as a platform for competitiveness and growth.