Gartner analyst — Andy Rowsell-Jones – has presented the findings of the India CIO survey during Gartner Symposium / ITxpo in Goa.
The 2019 Gartner CIO Agenda survey is based on data from more than 3,000 CIOs in 89 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $15 trillion in revenue/public-sector budget and $284 billion in IT spending.
The CIO survey shows that digital business reached a tipping point this year. 46 percent of Indian CIOs report their organizations have changed their business models or are in the process of changing them.
Initially, Indian CIOs were making a leap from IT-as-a-craft to IT-as-an-industrial-concern. Today, digital initiatives, along with growth, are the top priorities for CIOs in 2019. Digital has become mainstream.
Globally, CIOs expect their IT budgets to grow by 2.9 percent in 2019. This is slightly less than the 2018 average growth rate of 3 percent.
Indian IT budgets are expected to grow by 3.9 percent in 2019, which is less than the 7.4 percent growth rate of the previous year.
“This slowing can be attributed to the larger macroeconomic situation concerning slow economic growth, corporate earnings and market volatility. Overall, Asia/Pacific shows an expected growth of 3.5 percent,” Andy Rowsell-Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said.
Gartner suggests that Indian CIOs should be active in the transformation discussions and invest time, money and human resources to remove any barriers to change.
Disruptive emerging technologies cited by Indian CIOs include data and analytics (32 percent) and artificial intelligence (30 percent).
94 percent of Indian CIOs expect cybersecurity threats to worsen. 62 percent of Indian CIOs said cybersecurity is their responsibility. However, on its own, the IT organization can no longer provide cybersecurity.
The rise of social engineering attacks, such as phishing, requires a behavioral change from all employees, the survey said. 9 percent of Indian organizations say the board of directors are accountable for cybersecurity, rather than the CIO alone.
