Indian CIOs are facing several challenges including skill shortage during their digital transformation journey.
According to the 2017 Gartner CEO survey, 42 percent of enterprises plan to use digital technology to optimize the current business, not for transformation.
The above chart prepared by McKinsey & Company indicates about the 10 steps CIO need to plan for their digital transformation.
Digital transformation is about making technology the core of your business, not the back office IT that runs your business today.
Peter Sondergaard, executive vice president of research at Gartner stated that most organizations, have very large digital projects underway, but have not changed the way the organization behaves. They have not put digital at the core of their business.
India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. In comparison to an expected global average increase in revenue of 4 percent in 2017, organizations in India expect revenue to increase by 12.6 percent.
Moreover, Indian firms are expected to increase their IT budget by 10.7 percent, almost five times faster than the global average of 2.2 percent.
Gartner pointed out that the lack of general IT and specialist digital skills may slow the pace at which digitalization has been pursued to date.
Is India ready for new technologies
Meanwhile, Gartner’s 2017 Hype Cycle for ICT in India shows that Indian CIOs are well placed to gain from both emerging and maturing technologies.
“This year’s Hype Cycle demonstrates the keen interest Indian organizations are taking in both emerging and maturing technologies,” said Pankaj Prasad, principal research analyst at Gartner.
The IT market is witnessing the entry of local vendors in emerging, as well as mature, technology segments, including areas such as IoT robotic process automation offerings and machine-learning-based technologies.
Gartner said technologies such as machine learning, IoT and smart city frameworks are of a transformational nature, which will result in a significant transformation within the industry dynamics.
Cloud to support digital
Cloud technology is becoming popular and market studies have found it as a promising technology in the years to come.
Gartner analyst Ed Anderson believes that establishing a cloud strategy should be a priority for every organization.
Cloud strategies can bring together organizational constituencies through common definitions, clear benefits and risks — and through a process to move forward in the adoption and effective use of cloud.
Another challenge that Indian CIOs face is balancing the aggressive drive to digitalization with ensuring the necessary infrastructure is in place to support digital business.
Further, they need to ensure that sufficient emphasis is placed on investment in security and risk management technologies in order to ensure the continued growth in digital ecosystems.
Balancing the rush to digitalization and bimodal models with the need to create open platforms that enable new ecosystem partners to inter operate quickly is another task for them. Besides, they also play a key role in determining how to evolve from bimodal IT to bimodal business.
Future success will only be determined by how well CIOs in India deal with the stresses caused by such rapid business change and the new opportunities presented by their aggressive drive to exploit the digital explosion.
Gartner will be conducting a Symposium and ITxpo in Goa, India during November 13-16, where top CIOs will meet and share their views of the emerging trends shaping IT and business.