This week the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo 2018 will take place in Orlando, Florida, and executives will hear about how companies are deploying new technologies that change the way they do business. Highlighted are sessions on artificial intelligence, blockchain, customer experience, data analytics, and other ways in which the IP networks are becoming more central to core business value than ever. What may not be so clear, is that IT skills are now key to unlocking the value in these new technologies. Their focus needs to be on innovating new digital technologies that bring value to the business -not just network operations. So, how do we explain this to our business leaders?...

Imagine that you are hired by one of Chicago's finest restaurants to run their operation. You arrive your first evening on the job and things look great! There's a line of people out the door waiting to get in. All the tables are full, and smiles all around. So, you go into the kitchen to greet your chefs, and you find that three out of the four highly paid cooks are washing dishes and only one is cooking. -Well you go nuts! This restaurant only makes money when food is moving - washing dishes is not helping move food. But, a good employee is not going to bother her boss with every detail of every problem she has during the day; she's just going to get on with doing her job.

This is the same problem we have in IT. Our engineers are spending precious time doing routine and repetitive troubleshooting tasks. Anytime users "Can't connect to the Wi-Fi" or "SalesForce is slow" an IT engineer will drop everything and manually troubleshoot the problem. The same networking issues arise day after day and your technology experts are likely dedicating half their working time chasing these issues. More than ever, enterprise IT teams need to become centers of innovation, and companies need to provide these teams with the time, technology and skillsets to build solutions that contribute to increasing competitivity and profitability.

But, how does an IT department find time to innovate when they spend 42% of their time troubleshooting?* In our restaurant example, the answer is simple: you install an electric dishwasher. For the IT team, Cisco DNA Assurance is the solution. Cisco DNA Assurance turns your whole IP network into a sensor. Every network device sends streaming telemetry so that the analytics engine in DNA Center can spot potential problems in your network. The main dashboard alerts IT staff to any potential problems before users even know there is an issue. Then, DNA Center provides recommended actions that solve the issue in minutes, instead of hours. This means they have time to innovate instead of fix problems. DNA Center Assurance can be the tool your company's IT team needs to become a major contributor to your success in this age of digital transformation.

If you'd like to hear about how the IT director for Durham County, North Carolina transitioned his team from a cost center to a center of innovation, watch the video below:

So how much time are your engineers spending washing dishes? -Ask them, and then check out DNA Center Assurance https://cisco.com/go/assurance

* Internal Cisco DNA customer study February 2018.