CIOs see legacy IT networks, cloud as top concerns

Nearly 75 percent of CIOs stated their network is an issue in achieving their organisations goals, according to Brocade’s Global CIO Survey 2015. The survey of 200 CIOs revealed the business impact of legacy infrastructures, and highlighted the need for more innovative solutions to businesses network needs

“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. This has led to CIOs facing a range of challenges to contend with,” the survey stated.

According to the survey, CIOs are distracted by the business of keeping the lights on. Over half spend more than 50 percent 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.

Ken Cheng, CTO and senior VP of corporate development and emerging business, Brocade, said, “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 revolutionize customer engagement and transactional processes. 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."

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, the survey highlighted.

In addition, 40 percent of CIOs claim to be concerned about choosing the right vendors to deliver what the business is asking.

Cloud

Cloud is a given (90 percent have some form of cloud within their organisation) but control of cloud acquisition is a different matter. Over one third of respondents state 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, inability to access data or the cost to the business due to duplication of spending.

About 83 percent of CIOs believe procurement of cloud services without IT engagement will increase. And, 82 percent 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 percent of CIOs said they were worried about the delivery of new services to support business growth; 77 percent were concerned about delivering better analytics/data mining; 68 percent were worried about improving delivery of services, with the same percentage citing fast deployment of new applications as a significant concern; and 65 percent were concerned about reducing organisations operational.