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Bimodal or bust

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7 April 2016

Are you bimodal? Do you know someone who is? If the answer to the first question is ‘no’ and the answer to the second is ‘yes’, you could be in trouble. Not to put too fine a point on it, bimodal organisations could represent a real threat to you and your business.

Don’t take my word for it. Instead, listen to what Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner has to say about bimodal organisations. “We anticipate that three out of four organisations will be at some level of bimodal maturity by 2017,” he says. “Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for providers’ ability to aggressively transform into organisations that are able to respond to the needs of agile, bimodal enterprises.”

So what is bimodal IT? Gartner defines it as “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasising safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasising agility and speed”.

Gartner accepts that not all partners will need to be able to support bimodal IT, but if a provider is “targeting a customer segment that is interested in building stronger digital and bimodal capabilities, it is in their best interest to identify how best to transform”.

Essentially, bimodal providers are partners that can service their customers’ existing IT as well as driving the business forward with new solutions. To a large extent, they are being asked to ensure they can keep up with their customers as they embark on the process of digitally transforming their operations.

Pace of change
As Da Rold puts it: “The speed of digital business not only is dictating a new speed for IT, but a new pace for providers’ own internal innovation if they want to remain relevant and competitive.”

The good news, in terms of competition, is that only a few service providers have started to employ bimodal capabilities in some business units, according to Da Rold, and “they face substantial cultural and mind-set challenges in scaling this across the organisation”. But obviously, that’s also the bad news for partners seeking to become bimodal providers.

Service providers looking to differentiate themselves in the market and evolve rapidly toward a bimodal approach “must create a practical roadmap of the many changes required for a successful bimodal transformation”, he says. If they want to “embrace a bimodal work style and capabilities, they must also consider the overall go-to-market, sales and partnering strategy as well. Providers that fail to co-innovate with their customers will not realise the full potential of digital business”.

If Gartner’s estimates that three-quarters of organisations will be at some level of bimodal maturity within the next two years, things could be very uncomfortable for partners that can’t support them in that move. The market research company warns that “many organisations will reconsider existing provider relationships as they implement their roadmap to implement bimodal IT and adaptive sourcing”. It claims companies are adopting a layered approach to sourcing decisions that is driving them to consider new channel partners, including ISVs, industry-specific partners and new providers, such as startups and smaller, nimbler and more focused providers.

If Gartner is right, channel partners and service providers still in two minds about whether to become bimodal might want to look at it again.

 

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