The industry trend around digital transformation aims to streamline business processes and increase development efficiencies. But for all its promised simplicity, those in the information technology space are finding some of the greatest challenges to transformation internally as they struggle to get their organizations on board with the holistic overhaul modernization requires.

“When it comes to cloud … the whole organization needs to come along for the ride. It’s not something that [information technology] can do in a vacuum, and we’ve seen when they try … they’re often unsuccessful,” said Matt Liebowitz (pictured, left), global virtualization discipline lead at Dell EMC Consulting. Liebowitz and Vijay Kanchi (pictured, right), global practice leader of IT and operating model transformation at Dell EMC Consulting, work together to design and develop services for Dell’s consulting organization and deliver IT transformation programs to businesses.

Liebowitz and Kanchi spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), at the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas. They discussed the process of digital transformation and how businesses need to adapt in order to successfully modernize. (* Disclosure below.)

Transforming from the ground up

A primary goal in Dell’s IT support is helping customers get company stakeholders on board for the full process of digital transformation. “Share with them your [key performance indicators] for success, show them what success looks like, and then bring them along for the ride. That’s ultimately how you get success with cloud,” Liebowitz said.

To ensure delivery on those success KPIs, Dell supports customers in developing digital infrastructure fast to enable the functionality and velocity businesses expect from virtualization. “You need to go get automation of your code delivery process, and then you need to go in and build infrastructure and environment. … ITs have historically been in the request-response business. … The whole objective of digital transformation, is to reduce and eliminate the queue time, and enable the run time,” Kanchi said.

From there, the consultants focus on further breaking down working silos within the updated organization. “[We] bring a cross-functional team of folks from marketing, business units, IT, security … together to figure out what outcomes they’re looking to achieve … and then work … together to establish a shared … objective,” Kanchi added.

Through their work with customers, Liebowitz and Kanchi have found one of the greatest challenges to be staying ahead of the digital transformation curve themselves. The Dell consultants are constantly working up to a year and a half in advance to predict and deliver new capabilities to the businesses they serve.

“That’s primarily the responsibility of the consulting organization, to stay on top of technology and move into those new areas of skill. … We’re helping them design and create a transformation roadmap for multicloud,” Liebowitz concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2018 event. (* Disclosure: Dell EMC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell EMC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE