Software. It’s what every industry in the world needs to do business and is the essence of everything high tech. As tech companies continue to produce software that is “eating the world,” recent study findings reveal that the way software is being shared needs to go through its own transformation.
About four years ago, we started seeing a trend in our business at Thru where various high tech companies were coming to us with similar software delivery needs. These organizations (Dell EMC, VMware and Sage to name a few) had thousands of developers, support desk technicians, customers and partners that needed to access software but did not have an efficient way of doing so. Some of the problems these companies were experiencing included:
- Homegrown file sharing portals, email and FTP insufficient tools for handling large file sizes and meeting security requirements
- Too many solutions being used across the enterprise
- Difficulty managing entitlement of software for thousands of users
- Existing solutions often went down, causing a poor user experience and lack of availability
Forrester Reveals Major Problem in Tech Companies
Due to this common trend we found in our tech customers, we were interested to dig deeper and find out what the rest of the industry was using to share software. So, in December 2015, Thru commissioned Forrester to do a study to see if what we were seeing was a bigger trend or if it was just an aberration. The results that came back were alarming.
After surveying CIOs and IT heads for technology and electronics companies in the US, UK and Germany, the Forrester study revealed that, “The bulk of software build, patch and troubleshooting within technology and electronics companies is facilitated via email attachments and ungoverned file sharing tools.” In regards to software delivery, 82 percent of the respondents concurred that managing software delivery to clients/partners is a challenge.
Integration and Security Should Be Top Priorities
The big problem with companies using solutions like email, FTP and ungoverned file sharing tools to deliver software is that they put valuable intellectual property at risk and diminish the customer experience. What struck me is how the study aligned substantially with the trend we observed in our high tech customers. This shows us that an innumerable amount of technology companies need to modernize their software delivery systems to protect IP and improve the user experience.
If you’re an IT leader for a high tech company with these problems, you may be wondering, “What should we be using to improve the sharing of our software?” Based on the study findings, Forrester recommends that you should support your CIO and IT departments in the implementation of solutions that have enterprise-grade security, ease of use and capability to integrate into work processes such as email, CRM and ECM solutions. If you have self-serving customers and partners accessing your software through a portal, you need to know who is doing so, when they are in there, what they retrieved, and also be able to restrict data access and know what data is out of date.
After seeing the results from the Forrester study, the problem is clear. According to Forrester, “Today’s high tech firms are using a scattered approach to data sharing and distribution, and they invite the risk of poor customer experience and inconsistent governance.”
It’s time to modernize.
