CIO survey reveals business requirement for New IP

• Stymied by critical infrastructure issues
• Distracted by the business of ‘keeping the lights on’

A SURVEY of chief information officers (CIOs) worldwide, commissioned by Brocade Inc, reveals the business impact of legacy infrastructures, and highlights the need for more innovative solutions to businesses network needs, the company said.
 
In the Brocade Global CIO Survey 2015, 75% of CIO respondents stated their network is an issue in achieving their organisation’s goals. For almost a quarter of CIOs polled, it is a ‘significant’ issue, Brocade said in a statement.
 
The continued rise of new technologies, which fundamentally change the way businesses operate and engage with their customers, are responsible for a dramatic renaissance of the IT department, the company said.
 
This has led to CIOs facing a range of challenges to contend with, and ultimately highlights a clear need for them to understand and embrace the opportunities offered by the New IP (Internet Protocol), it added.
 
“The role of IT is changing from being an administrator of infrastructure to becoming an enabler of the business – driving innovation and new ways of working to revolutionise customer engagement and transactional processes,” said Sean Ong (pic), Brocade’s Malaysia country manager.
 
“More than ever, the CIO has a critical role in advising the board and senior management on strategic business investments, but legacy infrastructure remains a major roadblock, prohibiting business agility and innovation.
 
“The New IP offers a way of addressing this, enabling business objectives to be met,” he added.
 
The survey, conducted by independent research agency Vanson Bourne, polled 200 CIOs across six countries. Topline findings include:

• CIOs are distracted by the business of keeping the lights on. Over half spend more than 50% of their time reactively citing network downtime/ availability as one of the most likely reasons, especially for CIOs with more than 1,000 employees in their organisation.

• CIOs’ top concerns are security and fast deployment of and access to new applications and services, more than big data and analytics, communication and collaboration, or compliance with regulations.

• The top four technology issues CIOs need to address are operational platforms (Oracle, SAP), data centre upgrade/expansion, virtual, security, network upgrade/expansion.

• 40% of CIOs claim to be concerned about choosing the right vendors to deliver what the business is asking.

On the topic of cloud computing, the survey found:

• The cloud is a given (90% have some form of cloud within their organisation) but control of cloud acquisition is a different matter. Over one third of respondents said that cloud adoption without involvement from IT is not allowed but does or may happen anyway.

• CIOs’ concerns about non-authorised cloud include its (negative) impact on owned infrastructure performance, inability to manage the network and IT disputes with cloud providers. These are more likely to be worries than security, compliance, poor SLAs (service-level agreements), inability to access data or the cost to the business due to duplication of spending.

• 83% of CIOs believe procurement of cloud services without IT engagement will increase.

• 82% admit this leads to fears about their job security, and one in five find such activities cause them extreme stress.

When questioned what most worries them in their role:

• 79% of CIOs were worried about the delivery of new services to support business growth;

• 77% were concerned about delivering better analytics/ data mining;

• 68% were worried about improving delivery of services, with the same percentage citing fast deployment of new applications as a significant concern; and

• Reducing organisations operational expenses was a top concern for 65% of the respondents.

Research methodology

Vanson Bourne conducted a series of in-depth interviews with 200 CIOs from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States in late 2014, to understand the challenges a modern CIO faces in today's rapidly changing IT environments.
 
All respondents work for organisations with more than 250 employees; 81% work for organisations that have between 500 and 5,000 employees. A broad range of vertical industries were represented.
 
To check out an interactive infographic of the survey findings, go here.
 
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