CIOs Believe Green Screen Systems Hamper Retention and Recruitment, Global Study Reveals
Announcement posted by Micro Focus 05 Mar 2014
Of the 590 CIOs and IT directors polled from nine countries around the globe, a staggering 86% across ANZ have had complaints from end users about aspects of their green screen applications, while 54% claim end users feel bored, frustrated, ambivalent or restricted when using these applications. IT leaders themselves appear to agree, with 55% believing green screen applications do not do a good job.
Barriers to modernisation
Research respondents cited a number of barriers that prevent them from tackling the green screen challenge to modernise their applications.
· Skills deficit: Despite the negative impact on end user retention, 30% of respondents said they do not have the requisite skills in-house to change these applications. 30% reported difficulty hiring new employees who either have prior knowledge of green screen applications or are able to learn them quickly.
· The role of IT: 76% of respondents said that non-IT people within their organisation do not base their opinion of IT innovation on updating legacy applications. They believe 26% of non-IT people judge innovation on unusual or gimmicky applications and widgets, opting for novelty over legacy. Despite 52% of CIOs believing their IT organisation’s innovation role is integral to the business, 50% said their non-IT people do not see the IT department in an innovative light. Instead, respondents claim more than a third (34%) see it as a support for the organisation and 16% view it as merely a maintenance function.
· Technical difficulties: More than half (36%) of CIOs believe it would be technically difficult to update the user interface and experience of green screen applications.
· Cost and risk: 30% of IT leaders think it is too expensive to upgrade, and 30% say it is too risky to contemplate.
The productivity opportunity
All survey respondents (100%) believe there would be a positive impact on productivity by adding new capabilities to green screen applications. Integration with other in house applications running on a distributed platform was indicated as the most impactful (56%), while mobile access to green screen applications is believed to increase productivity by 40% of CIOs. According to 46%.of CIOs, access to internal or external websites, including an intranet, Google Maps or YellowPages, is believed to improve productivity.
Additional findings
· Around half of respondents (44%) feel that too much time and budget is spent on end user training for green screen applications
· If they were to upgrade their green screen applications, respondents confirmed the most important functionality factors would be:
o Integration with common software packages like Microsoft Excel, Skype and other VoIP systems, Google Maps, SAP and Salesforce (60%)
o Productivity enhancements such as pop-up calendars, dropdown menus, tool tips, hyperlinks, in line help and graphs (58%)
o Mobile access to green screen applications (54%)
o Modern, fresh and user friendly interface through browser technology (44%)
Commenting on the research results, Derek Britton, Director of Product Marketing at Micro Focus said: “Today’s end-user expects mobility, efficiency and simplicity from their business applications, and the same experience on any device, whenever, wherever. The accepted wisdom is that you cannot provide this from green screen systems – but that isn’t true.
“It is possible to both quickly and cheaply modernise green screen systems, delivering new features that take advantage of Windows, the internet and mobile devices, without any application code change or disruption to the end user community. Our Rumba solution delivers exactly that. This means the intellectual property inherent in green screen applications remains intact to deliver even greater competitive advantage,” concluded Britton.
References
1Green screen is the name the IT industry gives to the old single colour interface used to access mainframe systems for a vast number of major businesses worldwide.
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Notes to Editors
The independent research survey was undertaken by Vanson Bourne in December 2013. It covered 590 IT decision makers in nine countries including UK (100), France (100), Germany (100), USA (100), Brazil (100), Australia (35), New Zealand (15), Hong Kong (15) and Singapore (25). The respondents were from mainframe organisations with 501+ employees, covering multiple industry sectors.
To download an overview of the research, please click here.
For futher information on Rumba, please visit: www.microfocus.com/plus
About Micro Focus
Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernisation, Testing and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com.
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