Digitalization, the third era of enterprise IT, is beginning, but most CIOs do not feel prepared for this next era, says a global survey of CIOs by Gartner.
While more than half of the global respondents (51 percent) feel that digital torrent is coming faster than they can cope 42 percent don’t feel they have the talent needed to face the digital future in IT.
In India, 41 percent of the CIOs participated in the survey agreed that they cannot respond to the digital torrent in a timely fashion and this threatens the success of the business and credibility of their organization. However 22 percent said their IT organization has the right skills and capabilities in place to meet the upcoming challenges.
On an average CIOs expect their IT budgets to remain essentially flat (increasing 0.2 percent on average) in 2014.
However, IT budget in India is likely to increase 8.2 percent on an average, the survey said. While 66 percent of the CIOs in India who participated in the survey indicated a rise in the budget in 2014, 20 percent said they expect a dip from 2013. Fifteen percent indicated it is likely to be unchanged. At least 41 percent of the total IT spend is outside the IT organization.
Top five technology priorities for enterprise IT in India are Mobile, BI/Analytics, Infrastructure & Datacenter, ERP and Cloud.
The survey included 2,339 CIOs, representing more than $300 billion in CIO IT budgets in 77 countries.
Commenting on the findings of the report, “Taming the Digital Dragon: The 2014 CIO Agenda,” Dave Aron, vice president and Gartner Fellow, said, “2014 must be a year of significant change if CIOs are to help their businesses and public sector agencies remain relevant in an increasingly digital world.”
During the first era of enterprise IT, the focus was on how IT could help do new and seemingly magical things — automating operations to create massive improvements in speed and scale, and providing business leaders with management information they never had before.
The last decade has represented the second era of enterprise IT, an era of industrialization of enterprise IT, making it more reliable, predictable, open and transparent. However, while this second era has been necessary and powerful, tight budgets and little appetite for risk left scant room for innovation.
Entering the third era of enterprise IT technological and societal trends, such as the Nexus of Forces and the Internet of Things, are changing everything, Gartner said. These trends not only improve what businesses do with technology to make themselves faster, cheaper and more scalable, but fundamentally change businesses with information and technology, changing the basis of competition and in some cases, creating new industries.
“2014 will be a year of dual goals: responding to ongoing needs for efficiency and growth, but also shifting to exploit a fundamentally different digital paradigm. Ignoring either of these is not an option,” said Aron.
According to Aron, IT spending, portfolio balance and the choice of technologies, talent, sourcing options, leadership, structure and governance must all be designed to make the business win. “However, despite the need to grow, there is pressure on IT budgets,” he said.
