SECTOR INSIGHT
The past decade has been witness to rampant digitisation. The surge in adoption rates of emerging technologies is putting a strain on the IT sector, making most traditional processes and methodologies obsolete. As the cloud services market expands five times faster than traditional IT spending, and the reliance on social, mobile and analytics technologies soars, there has been a seismic shift in how businesses function, providing CIOs with an unprecedented opportunity to drive innovation, strategy and revenue growth. The role of the CIO is clearly changing.
A survey of 3,352 CIOs and IT leaders highlights some crucial aspects of the CIO’s role in a business world that is galloping towards digitisation. Cloud computing has become the backbone of IT departments. Research conducted by Forbes shows that approximately 93 per cent of businesses currently rely on cloud technology to some degree, with 82 per cent of enterprises adopting a hybrid cloud strategy. Moreover, a Gartner study reveals spending on public cloud services increased 32 per cent in 2015 and is expected to reach $16.5 billion in 2016.
A number of different cloud models are being adopted by firms for the purposes of streamlining business processes and embedding the flexibility to react quickly to the changing needs of their operating market. This massive shift in organisations’ business models has been spurred by the need to keep pace with the rapid digitisation taking place globally.
By 2017, the public cloud services market is to expected to exceed $244 billion, and by 2020, spending on cloud services will top $500 billion. Despite these figures, it is important to remember that cloud services still account for a minor portion of the IT services market.
With the change in IT practices, CIOs are now looking for new ways to bring value to their organisations. The modern IT sector’s focus has shifted towards increased revenue growth, enhanced customer experiences and data-based insights. This has enabled CIOs to step back and take a more expansive view of their roles in the IT sector. Their jobs no longer constitute the mere building and operation of technology; today’s CIO carries the responsibility of strategising core business functions by integrating legacy IT systems with cloud architectures.
Traditional IT concerns of integration, performance management and security need new approaches that many CIOs feel are beyond their skillset. A survey of 2,300 CIOs by Gartner reveals that approximately 50 per cent feel they are not able to keep pace with the rapid changes brought about by the technologies prevalent in the millennial workplace. Over 40 per cent of those surveyed feel that they lack the necessary skills to keep pace with changes in technology.
The cloud is now responsible for shaping corporate strategy; so much so that business processes and core operations have to be redesigned. This has created change-management challenges for CIOs who now need to develop closer, more productive bonds with Clevel executives, in order to navigate potential conflicts. Enterprises looking to implement modern cloud solutions face challenges associated with scalability, high performance and flexibility, which CIOs need to address. Legacy IT systems are often burdened with complex code and programming shortcuts that need to be integrated with modern standards.
Organisations that are keen to host cloud services face crucial questions regarding IT architecture: What systems need to be kept on premises, and what systems need to be shifted to the cloud? When in a public cloud, what resources are to be shared and when in a private cloud, what systems will make the deployment work more efficiently? How can in-house and cloudbased systems be integrated in a seamless way for enhanced performance?
These are only some of the questions that need to be answered. Part of the reason CIOs are faced with these questions is due to some authority being shifted away from IT and into the hands of end-users and customers. The cloud has also brought security issues to the fore, so CIOs must now determine the best approach to protect the company’s customers, systems and employees. Successful CIOs are therefore more aligned with their company’s business strategy than they were in days gone by.
Even though they face numerous technological, political and operational challenges, CIOs must deliver a cloud architecture that is secure, scalable and mobile. It must offer reliable customer support, robust business-continuity provisions, and it must integrate seamlessly with legacy systems.
As the age of transformation moves to the next stage, CIOs must pay close attention to the changing dynamics in the world of predictive analysis. As Gartner predicts, advanced analytics will be used by more than half of all large organisations globally by 2018. Every business rests on the technology that supports its processes, and the primary role of new-age CIOs is to reassess how traditional IT systems are merged with digital technology throughout the organisation. CIOs must regularly identify new opportunities and address the challenges brought about by the ecosystem of merging old and new technologies, so that business units can function in silos.
Incorporating advanced, intelligent data-driven solutions ensure organisation’s digital functions operate at optimum levels. As strategy makers for the company, predictive analytics not only help CIOs build a leaner and costeffective digital infrastructure, but also aids them to create a more accurate view of the departments and processes. Machine learning and advanced analytics provide a stronger return on investments for CIOs who can leverage this technology to reduce management overheads, and manage a lower risk IT platform that has diminished wasted capacity across the organisation. of businesses currently rely on cloud technology to some degree