How to make use of advancing information technology to streamline their business has remained the biggest challenge CIOs are facing across North America, according to The Society for Information Management’s (SIM) IT trend study, titled “Taking the Pulse of IT.”
The report confirms that just about every enterprise is trying to arm itself with data analytics to bolster business operation. As a result, data analytics has become the largest area of their investment.
This annual report, which the Society for Information Management (SIM) has been conducting since 1984, remains one of the principal studies on what IT leaders are most concerned with and focused on.
“The bottom line,” said Leon Kappelman, Ph.D., IT professor, and lead researcher of the Study, “is that senior IT leadership is focusing their attention and resources on being more pragmatic, holistic and business customer-focused. This is a very important and positive change, which bodes well for the whole economy.”
This year’s study included complete responses from 1,218 members, from 785 organizations, with total revenues of nearly $5 trillion and $250 billion in 2015 IT spending.
Many CIOs are still wondering how to align new technology capabilities with their business needs. “It is possible that alignment remains a persistent issue due to the changing nature of business and the difficulty that the IT organization has in responding to these changes. In other words, it is one thing to become aligned, but quite another to stay aligned,” the study authors noted.
For many CIOs, analytics and business intelligence are the worrisome technology topics, with nearly 50 percent of those surveyed expressing concern at data security.
According to the study, CIOs are now spending double their time on business priorities, strategy and architecture (from 8.1 percent in 2014 to 16.2 percent in 2015). This is where CIOs spend most of their time, followed by forming IT strategy (11.9 percent) and IT operations (8 percent).
Despite the widening skill gap, enterprises are increasingly hiring IT talent. In the survey, 51% said they anticipate an increase in headcount, while 35% expect a decline and 14% expect no change.
Enterprises have gone spending more money on Cloud technology, but they appeared to lessen their investment in hardware, consultants and contractors.
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