CIOs are investing on technologies that support their comprehensive digital roadmap.
The year 2020 has been the most challenging one for CIOs. They are on the same radar as the CEOs, taking responsibility to ensure business continuity while meeting new IT requirements with a tight budget.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a majority of the employees working remotely, there has been a sudden shift in the focus and planning of enterprise technology leaders across sectors. Their hands are full in strategizing IT projects while maximizing the value of technology investments.
As technology leaders, who were hitherto tasked with managing IT assets of the organisation, have a lot more to deliver now. Other than modernizing and transforming the technology stack, CIO are now directly responsible for innovation, customer experience and business growth.
A CIO’s success lies in increasing the preparedness to withstand impending business disruption, and this was put to test during the pandemic. With a shift to remote working, uncertain market conditions, and changing customer demands, CIOs must become change drivers and lead results-driven business transformation and transform the enterprise by promoting enterprise agility.
Developing new revenue streams through technology is paramount to CIOs of small and medium enterprises. Managing compliance requirements and data protection, ensuring digital collaborations, and amplifying IT resources with a tighter budget are some of the challenges staring at the CIOs today who are bracing for a period of a post-COVID era in 2021 in ensuring business continuity.
As CIOs brace themselves for the new normal, here are the top five areas they will focus on investing in 2021:
AI and ML
considering the future business needs and to stay ahead of the curve, IT heads are focusing on investing in new-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Analytics, etc.
Predictive Analytics
Strengthening their existing IT infrastructure and to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer behaviour, most CIOs are planning to increase their spending on predictive analytics.
Cybersecurity
With the shift to remote working, organisations are prone to cyber-attacks and valuable data getting compromised. Along with the shift in investment towards technologies that support digitalization, CIOs are also focusing more on investments in cybersecurity as well.
Cloud computing
Shift to remote working was facilitated by cloud services in a few companies. Remote working is here to stay, and there will be an increased spend on the use of cloud infrastructure. As agility and adaptability become key goals for business continuity going forward, cloud will continue to be a top priority.
IoT and Edge
As automation and digitization become the norm, technology leaders are significantly leveraging new use case of IoT and Edge computing. 2021 will see increased adoption of these technologies in the areas of smart cities, connected vehicles, medical applications, smart surveillance and many more.
