Monday Morning Impact – November 28

Gartner Predicts Huge Increase in Sustainability Investment

A new Gartner survey suggests that 87% of business leaders expect to increase their organization’s investment in sustainability over the next two years.

Customers are the primary stakeholder group creating pressure for organizations to invest or act on sustainability issues, selected by 80% of executives, followed by investors (60%) and regulators (55%).

“Sustainability enables businesses to cope with disruption,” said Distinguished VP Analyst Kristin Moyer. “Economic uncertainty, geopolitical conflict and escalating materials and energy costs are forcing businesses to reexamine all forms of expenditure. This focus on essentialism, in combination with increasing stakeholder desire to see progress on environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, creates new opportunities for enterprises to grow while mitigating cost and risk.”

The survey found that 86% of business leaders see sustainability as an investment which protects their organization from disruption. Additionally, 83% said sustainability program activities directly created both short- and long-term value for their organization, and 80% indicated that sustainability helped their organization optimize and reduce costs. The top areas where survey respondents said sustainability programs are mitigating cost increases are energy consumption, business travel and customer transactions.

Sustainability can also enable new value creation and business growth opportunities. Fifty-seven percent of business leaders said the enterprise sustainability program has a strong connection to the results on the income statement, and 42% of respondents are leveraging their sustainability activities to drive innovation, differentiation, and enterprise growth through sustainable products.

The survey was conducted in June and July 2022 among 221 respondents in North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific. Respondents were executives in director roles or above within organizations with enterprise-wide annual revenue of at least $250 million for fiscal year 2021, which are currently engaged in sustainability-related activities. Gartner clients can learn more in “2022 Sustainability Survey: Use Sustainability to Drive Value and Mitigate Disruption.”

Channel Impact^®
Companies and their advisers are urged to focus on product attributes that are important to customers and how these priorities shape buying decisions. When viewed through a strategic lens, sustainability can provide positive impacts for businesses during difficult market conditions.”

Rubrik Says One Third of Organizations Forced to Change Leadership as a Result of a Cyberattack

IT and security leaders must address, on average, one cyberattack per week according to a new study released today titled “The State of Data Security” by Rubrik Zero Labs of Palo Alto, California.

Nearly every leader surveyed experienced a cyberattack over the past year, and on average faced 47 attacks in that timeframe — or nearly one cyberattack per week.

Among the key findings, 52% reported a data breach and 51% reported facing a ransomware attack in the past year. Only 5% of organizations were able to return to business continuity or normal operations within one hour of discovering a cyberattack. Nearly half (48%) of IT and security leaders reported to be concerned about data breaches (25%) or ransomware events (23%) as the top threat for the year ahead, and 92% of respondents are concerned they will be unable to maintain business continuity if they experience a cyberattack. One third believe their board has little to no confidence in their organization’s ability to recover critical data and business applications after a cyberattack. Three-fourths reported their organization is likely to consider paying a ransom following a cyberattack, and nearly all (96%) of respondents reported significant emotional or psychological consequences following a cyberattack, ranging from worries over job security (43%) to loss of trust among colleagues (37%).

Approximately one third of respondents reported leadership changes as a result of a cyberattack.

“It’s clear from this research that cyberattacks continue to produce large impacts against global organizations and the effects are compounding,” said Steven Stone, Head of Rubrik Zero Labs. “In addition to this rise in frequency and impacts of cyber events, the individuals on the front lines are taking a psychological hit on their wellbeing. Trust is down and anxiety is up. Without a proactive and reliable approach to defend against modern cyberthreats and strengthen confidence in an organization’s ability to resolve these cyber events, these impacts – both human and organizational – will continue to worsen and feed each other. The good news is we’re also seeing pragmatic, proven strategies in this same space paying off and we can build off these approaches.”

“The State of Data Security” comes from Rubrik Zero Labs, the company’s new cybersecurity research unit. The research initiative gathered responses from 1,625 IT and Security decision makers at companies of 500 or more employees in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and India between July 18th and July 27th, 2022.

Channel Impact^®
The data can be used by channel partners who leverage empirical data to demonstrate to their customers the profound risks associated with cyberattacks.

Ingram Micro Now Offering “SIM to Cloud Solutions”

Ingram Micro has rolled out a new B2B, go-to-market relationship with T-Mobile designed to increase adoption of “SIM to Cloud Solutions” with channel partners focused on the small to mid-size sector.

The initiative is intended to further educate the market on the benefits of 5G and secure connectivity, and speed the adoption of industry-aligned 5G solutions by simplifying the sales cycle.

“Executing against Ingram Micro’s stated SIM to Cloud strategy, we are excited to welcome T-Mobile and further enable our channel partners to capitalize on their existing datacenter and cloud expertise and create, market, sell and support new 5G business and service opportunities that businesses of all sizes are hungry for and need,” said Jeff Yelton, Vice President and General Manager for Infrastructure and Specialty Technologies at Ingram Micro.

“Today’s businesses require modern networking solutions that are agile, flexible and reliable – allowing their teams and their customers to connect and engage securely almost anywhere at any time,” says George Fischer, senior vice president of Sales, T-Mobile for Business. “By aligning with Ingram Micro, T-Mobile brings fast, reliable connectivity on a proven 5G network to tens of thousands of Ingram Micro channel partners and their customers in the U.S. who are striving to make IT work virtually anywhere for businesses.”

Channel Impact^®
The partnership is intended to help allied agents, sub-agents, MSPs and VARs to market, sell, and support 5G services. Such channel partners are often challenged with successfully securing and optimizing today’s workforce and workflows using public, private and hybrid cloud networks.