State of Digital Enterprise Maturity: Not Done with Digital Transformation Yet

Applications This is the phase in which applications are being built to replace manual tasks. Just looking back to the beginning of the Internet Era, circa 2000, we can see that organizations have gone through this phase multiple times. Each generation of application architectures "restarts" this cycle, with organizations refactoring and rewriting and adding new applications to take advantage of new architectures and technology.

Modernization This is the phase in which IT doubles down on modernizing practices, tools, and technologies to operate, optimize, and secure all those new applications. This phase always follows the first, as new application architectures drive new needs and ways of working into operations that require reworking how we approach delivery and security. Consider how much cloud has changed operations. Now consider how much AI is going to change operations. See what I mean?

Data and Analytics Ah, the vaunted "final phase" of the cycle. Organizations figure out what data they need and how to analyze it to apply it to operations, workflows, and business functions to optimize them. This requires new practices and approaches, too. Consider that prior to 2020 most organizations viewed this phase as focusing on customer and corporate data. Today? It's all about telemetry (operational data). And tomorrow, who knows?

Now, all this is to say that while we found that more organizations this year are doers, that is they are closing in on operating as a digital business, they aren't done yet because, well, AI is here.