Manufacturing enterprises see ROI increase as they embrace event-driven architecture across their organisation, a new survey has found.
And as enterprises gain experience in their early applications of event-driven architecture (EDA) they recognise other areas of their business in which EDA could be beneficial.
The survey, an IDC Infobrief sponsored by Solace, ‘Getting in Sync: Unlocking the Exponential Business Value of Real-Time Event-Driven Data Flows’, revealed that 82 per cent of companies plan to apply up to three new EDA use cases within the next 24 months while 93 per cent of companies that have deployed EDA across multiple use cases said EDA has met or exceeded their expectations.
“It’s been clear for several years that event-driven architecture has become the de facto standard way businesses are becoming real-time, and the results of this survey confirm that,” said Mychelle Mollot, chief marketing officer at Solace. “The survey results show how the market has evolved since a survey we conducted in 2021, and sheds light on the increasing ROI enterprises see as they advance toward enterprise-wide EDA.”
The survey found that in addition to technical advantages from EDA, most businesses also see clear business benefits: 23 per cent of respondents reported increasing productivity, 22 per cent said better customer acquisition, and 18 per cent saw revenues increase as a result of their EDA efforts.
“EDA maturity is linked to general digital maturity, as those with higher levels of EDA maturity generally exhibit the strategic and change management support needed to sustain digital business initiatives,” said Shari Lava, research director, automation within the AI and automation group, IDC. “In fact, organizations with higher levels of EDA maturity were more likely to report being ahead of their peers in developing digital business models than those in early stages.”
Expanding the footprint of EDA across the enterprise is a journey, and the survey also revealed that as benefits evolve over time, so do the challenges faced. For organisations just getting started with EDA, the most common challenges are lack of understanding of EDA benefits and inconsistent buy-in between business and IT. As organisations progress and internal support increases, the most common concerns are keeping costs in check and finding the right use cases. Finally, companies further along run into change resistance as EDA affects an increasing number of processes across lines of business and partners.
The results of the survey are comparative to the findings from a 2021 study, also sponsored by Solace, which was the first ever focused specifically on EDA. The 2021 study concluded that although the majority of respondents recognised the critical business value in embracing EDA, adoption was still ‘early days’ and required more support from business leadership in order to move forward.