In this week's news roundup for IT pros, new research on CIO priorities and budgets, and insights from the Gartner Symposium.
New report highlights top 10 concerns for CIOs and IT leaders [TechRepublic]: Covering the results of the latest Society for Information Management (SIM) IT Trends Study, Conner Forrest writes, “Clearly aligning IT with business remains a top priority, while analytics and cloud usage continue to grow.” In fact, in a survey of 1,200 IT professionals, 490 of whom identified at CIOs, nearly half (41.7 percent) cited “alignment of IT with the business” as their top concern, ahead of security, innovation and strategic planning.
CIOs need to think strategically about saying ‘No’ [Wall Street Journal]: Recapping a talk by Gartner Inc. Vice President and Fellow Tina Nunno at the company's Symposium this week, Tom Loftus makes the case that “the ability to deliver an assertive ‘no’ is among the most powerful tools available to the chief information officer.” The article goes on to outline a few tips for saying no strategically, with an emphasis on big picture thinking. A strong takeaway from Nunno's talk, Loftus writes, “The key is to get the other party to think more about their request’s impact.”
CIOs move more dollars to digital transformation [CIO Magazine]: Clint Boulton brings us the highlights of the Gartner 2017 CIO agenda survey, which reveals how “companies are overhauling their business models and allocating more of their IT budgets to catch digital disruptors.” Gartner analyst Andy Rowsell-Jones, who presented the findings at the Symposium, said that top digital performers were focused on innovation, not on reducing IT costs. Barriers to digital transformation were also uncovered by the report, chief among them being IT skills gaps. Boulton writes, “An average of 34 percent of respondents reported that information-related skills represent the biggest gap, especially skills required to work with advanced analytics systems.”
IT's new role: Build a digital society worthy of our descendents [ZDNet]: Jason Hiner recaps a keynote from Gartner's Peter Sondergaard at the Symposium. Sondergaard spoke of a “new digital platform that transcends traditional IT” that will “become the responsibility of tech leaders if they change their mindset and step up to actually lead.” The platform as he described it has five building blocks: IT systems, customers, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and ecosystems. A notable quote from the talk, “Get it right, and we, our children, and our children's children will prosper.”
