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Cloud-native strategies drive purchasing decisions beyond IT

Enterprises are increasingly moving to distributed cloud ecosystems that require assembling a mix of on-premises and cloud technologies.

According to a survey by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), this trend complicates decisions about where to develop and deploy applications, which continues to impact which departments influence IT purchasing and which make the final decision.

The result: Traditional technology buyer “personas”—categories of customers grouped by common needs and responsibilities—are evolving. Departments outside of IT that previously played little or no role in the actual purchase of IT infrastructure and applications are increasingly being included in purchasing decisions. Additionally, the scope of influence over on-premises and cloud deployment budgets is slowly expanding beyond the traditional centers of IT management and operations to include industry leaders and specialists in cybersecurity, risk and compliance, and cloud architecture and platform engineering .

The ESG survey points to improvements in how these groups collaborate on IT purchasing, but more progress needs to be made, according to ESG analysts, who summarized their findings in a report titled “Understanding Buyer and Influencer Personas.” .

“Senior IT management has increasingly significant responsibility to ensure that complex, multidisciplinary strategies are implemented optimally and without obstacles that can slow down the speed of business. This responsibility extends to a wide range of teams,” the report says. “Collaboration is essential.”

IT loosens the wallet

ESG surveyed 368 IT professionals in the US and Canada to better understand how IT departments are moving to distributed clouds and how the migration to this new ecosystem has impacted their budgeting and purchasing processes.

ESG analysts noted that while influencers could make strong suggestions, senior IT management is still typically the final decision-maker for on-site infrastructure. In the survey, 54% of respondents cited this group as owning the purchasing decision, followed by IT management (22%) and IT operations (8%). Other groups, including industry leadership and cybersecurity, were in the low single digits (Figure 1). Purchasing on-premise applications follows a similar pattern.

Figure 1. IT management and operations still most often make the final purchasing decision for on-premises infrastructure, but ESG is noticing a trend where groups such as business units, cybersecurity and platform engineering are increasingly making the decision.

However, purchasing public cloud services shows a subtle shift in buyer roles. While senior management was cited as the decision maker by the majority of respondents (57%), the involvement of cloud architecture and operations teams was, unsurprisingly, comparable to that of IT operations at 8% and 7%, respectively.

Collaboration challenges and some solutions

Survey respondents reported high levels of collaboration between IT and LOB groups: 47% said they collaborate regularly and the same percentage said collaboration occurs as needed (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Survey respondents report strong collaboration between IT and business departments, as well as slightly better collaboration between IT and application development teams, which ESG attributes to tools and methodologies focused on cloud-native development.

Collaboration between IT and application development teams is slightly more common, which ESG attributes in part to a modern approach to cloud-native development. Collaboration between IT and application development influences purchasing decisions, the survey finds. DevOps and platform engineering teams are increasingly making spending decisions on development tools, even if these are funded from budgets that are still set by IT leadership.

The survey report also found that IT and app developer groups have made progress in improving the collaboration that is so necessary for cloud-native development, including greater use of collaboration tools, more processes based on team collaboration, and better shared Use of data and resources teams. However, respondents said challenges persist, citing a variety of barriers to collaboration between IT and development teams, including a lack of clear agendas, excessive reviews and iterations, vague requirements and too many tools.

To address these issues, analysts made the following recommendations:

Identify and define common goals. Provide insight into the plans and goals of different teams and promote teamwork through regular meetings. Use collaboration tools, but be careful not to have too many.
Coordinate skills development across teams. Train IT to gain a basic understanding of other teams’ activities. This can increase trust between teams and make it easier for IT to assess requirements and deploy appropriate technology.
Consider implementing or expanding full self-service. While self-service poses the risk of unauthorized use, security issues, cost and complexity, the extension also offers developers in particular more freedom to improve the speed and regularity of application and platform development. This will be crucial as companies increasingly use internally developed applications to increase their revenue.
Use requests for proposals (RFPs) for complex and impactful purchases. Using RFPs to identify and collaborate with vendors and service providers can help IT teams learn how to properly plan complex projects and requirements, standardize their purchasing approach, align with business goals, and mitigate risk.

David Essex is an industry editor covering enterprise applications, emerging technologies and market trends, and produces in-depth content for multiple TechTarget websites.

Jasper Thomas