CIOs Cite Company Culture as Top Barrier to Technology Innovation

Intro: A small minority of CIOs and IT directors perceive their organization as a “digital innovator,” according to a recent survey from Logicalis. The resulting “Global CIO Survey 2017–2018” report reveals that survey respondents are most likely to cite their company’s culture as a major barrier to their ongoing digital transformation efforts, in addition to budget limitations. The report covers a wide range of additional technology trends and topics, including the internet of things (IoT), software development and ransomware, which has emerged as a top security threat, according to survey respondents. A total of 890 global CIOs and IT directors took part in the research. The following slide show presents survey highlights, with charts provided by Logicalis.

Only 5 percent of survey respondents view their organization as a “digital innovator.” Just one-fifth perceive their organization as an early adopter of new technologies.

The culture of an organization presents a main barrier to digital transformation, according to 56 percent of survey respondents. One-half of the respondents say budget constraints represent a significant barrier.

Ransomware and corporate extortion have emerged as a top IT security threat, according to 72 percent of respondents. Three of five respondents cite attacks that target corporate systems and application vulnerabilities.

Seventy percent of respondents feel that security concerns are keeping them from increasing their use of cloud services, according to Logicalis. In addition, 46 percent say data sovereignty issues present notable barriers in increasing cloud services usage.

Network security is a top security investment priority for 72 percent of organizations. Identity and access management also ranks highly on the priority list, according to 47 percent of respondents.

Logicalis reports that 55 percent of respondents say that, in assessing what they struggle with the most in pursuing business analytics, the complexities associated with these initiatives create one of the greatest challenges. More than two of five respondents say the lack of a “clear brief” (or direction) from business poses a major challenge.

To address the analytics challenges, 54 percent of respondents say they are working with lines-of-business to clarify requirements. Nearly two of five say they are restructuring and/or aggregating data.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents say their company is developing software “in one form or another.” The majority use a combination of in-house and third-party developers to build new apps.

Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents say they develop internal apps to streamline existing business processes. Nearly one-half build new apps to create new services and revenues.

Almost one-quarter of respondents said their organization is already using internet of things (IoT) technology, and an additional 17 percent said their company will be doing so within a year. Among other benefits, 56 percent of respondents expect IoT to improve their operations.