As CIOs begin a fightback against Shadow IT, engaging with line of business to reshape IT departments as internal service providers, Joanne Nelson looks at their technology priorities.
Social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, collectively known as SMAC, have garnered a great deal of media attention over the last 12 months. But is this hype reflected in CIO views? Perhaps more significantly, what is the relative importance of these four technology and service classes in the CIOs’ new vision for IT?
The Logicalis CIO Survey 2015 looked at exactly that - to assess the real world, relative importance of SMAC technologies, it asked CIOs to rate the role of each in driving business innovation.
The answer to that first question was an unequivoval ‘yes’. The perception of SMAC amongst CIOs does live up to the market hype. What’s more, the survey suggests that SMAC adoption is at the heart of their vision for the transformation of IT – though sMAc might be a more accurate acronym, given the survey results.
That is, CIOs’ primary focus is on mobile services and analytics. Reflecting an ongoing trend towards real time business driven by anywhere, any time access to applications and insight, 62% and 63% respectively cite mobile and analytics as ‘very important’ or ‘critical’ to business innovation.
By contrast, social lags well behind. Only one third (37%) of CIOs view technologies and services like collaboration software, social internet and community hubs as having high importance – as a new generation of ‘digital natives’ enters the workforce, it will be interesting to see how this view changes.
Cloud technologies also lag behind (47%), but this is more likely to reflect the overall maturity of the cloud model, which is increasingly seen as ‘business as usual’ technology.
Away from the global picture, a number of regional variations emerge:
- Analytics are most important in the US and LATAM
- Mobile leads the way in LATAM, Europe and APAC
- APAC and LATAM value social more than other regions
- Cloud remains a significant priority for two thirds (67%) of CIOs in LATAM.
Overall, it seems that, as CIOs seeking to regain control by establishing ‘internal service providers’ capable of delivering the choice of services their organisation needs – the first focus is on mobility and insight.
Frankly it is difficult to imagine anything more in step with the needs of line of business executives in our globally connected, information rich business environment.
For more information, download the Logicalis CIO Survey Report 2015.