CIOs say IT is getting more complex

Most CIOs believe that IT, instead of simplifying things, it making their role more complicated, according to a new report.

The survey, carried out by Trustmarque, found that 93 percent of CIOs believe IT complexity has increased. The main culprit for this was cloud computing, according to 66 percent of CIOs, followed by legacy technology (51 percent) and software licensing (51 percent).

Almost three-quarters of respondents (71 percent) agreed it was increasingly difficult to understand what the right technology to use was. A further 61 percent agreed establishing the right solution to their business problem/need was becoming more complicated.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of CIOs (79 percent) said that simplifying IT was a priority for their organisation. When asked about their biggest priority, 36 percent said it was ‘simplifying the management of shadow IT and business-led IT spend’, followed by ‘simplifying the user experience through deploying new digital technologies’ (34 percent) and ‘simplifying legacy IT’ (30 percent).

The research found that this complexity surrounding which technologies meet business needs is also leading directly to concerns relating to cybersecurity. As a result, 87 percent of CIOs admitted they found it a challenge to stay on top of security threats because of the rapid pace of change.

An even higher number of CIOs (89 percent) argued that simplifying legacy IT while driving innovation remains a challenge.

Skills were also proving a challenge for CIO. The majority of respondents (88 percent) agreed that the IT skills that organisations need have changed over the last five years. Indeed, 80 percent of CIOs stated that they lacked the necessary skills and resources in-house, which was affecting IT transformation projects and preventing them from meeting the needs of the business at the speed it requires.

“Whilst the latest digital technology delivers unmatched business benefits, improved usability, choice and agility, it requires new skills and capabilities and a significant transformation to maximise the value gained,” says James Butler, CTO at Trustmarque.

“The challenge of transforming traditional IT estates and organisations to this new platform is as significant as from mainframes to PCs, or the adoption of the internet. This transition from the internet-enabled business to the digital one is a huge increase in complexity for IT departments designed for business as usual technical operations, while traditional models of integration, licensing and management that were not designed for cloud are exacerbating the problem.”