Flexera Releases 2020 CIO Priorities Report

“The findings in the 2020 CIO Priorities Report echo changes we’ve made in our own company and have encouraged our customers to follow,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera. “We’re seeing CIOs and IT departments being tasked with leading the digital transformation—from migrating to the cloud or transforming the customer experience—and this demand is only going to increase, according to the report.

“Today, businesses are required to make fast but well-informed decisions on a daily basis to keep up with the ever-changing tech landscape,” Ryan continued. “Consequently, it’s imperative that IT is involved early on in business-strategy planning, not simply as an implementer of technology, but as an equal partner in the business. The role of equal partner brings with it new challenges for IT and the CIO.”

A few key highlights from the 2020 CIO Priorities Report:

• Digital transformation impacts CIO priorities
  • More than 90 percent expect the pace of digital transformation to increase in 2020
  • Customer experience is the top driver of digital transformation efforts with 69 percent rating it very important, but only 36 percent consider themselves very mature in this area
  • As a result, CIOs are planning for heavy adoption of cloud (public, private and multi-cloud) and artificial intelligence (AI) in 2020
• CIOs face challenges in the shift to digital
  • More than a third of CIOs are very concerned about lock-in with public cloud, leading to multi-cloud strategies
  • Shifting to the cloud is driving 83 percent of organizations to increase investments in cloud security in 2020, with 47 percent planning for significant increases
  • With the serious business risks that security breaches pose, 84 percent plan to increase investments in data protection and privacy
  • As the pace of change increases, 89 percent cite the lack of quality data as an obstacle to good decision making
• IT strategic alignment becomes more critical
  • Supporting the shift to digital and cloud, 36 percent of the IT budget is now allocated to growth and innovation
  • IT organizations struggle to be equal partners in their relationship with business functions, acting in this strategic capacity only 24 percent of the time
  • The need for IT to act as an equal partner is critical since 65 percent of organizations have a heavy or moderate focus on business-led IT
  • Constant change is the norm, with 41 percent of respondents updating their strategic IT roadmaps at least monthly
• Staffing changes to support digital transformation
  • Aligned with their critical initiatives, CIOs are looking to supplement skills gaps in cloud, cybersecurity and AI
  • Organizations to fill skills gaps by increasing the use of external partners, prioritizing resources located in North America, India and Western Europe
  • 84 percent expect to increase investments to upskill existing employees, enabling them to increase their value

The report leveraged a large panel comprised of 302 global CIOs across industries. The panel is composed of vetted respondents with detailed profiles and is rigorously maintained. The vast majority of respondents are C-suite executives from organizations with a minimum of 2,000 employees.

Complete results and highlights are available in the 2020 CIO Priorities Report. The report results are made available under an Open Source Creative Commons License so the data may be freely shared with the required attribution.

For more information on the Flexera 2020 Digital Transformation Planning Report

• Download the report here
• Sign up for the report webinar here