CIOs Question Their Ability to Drive Business Growth

While most CIOs look forward to the opportunity to use tech to help the business strategically, several obstacles are getting in the way, according to a recent survey. The majority of surveyed CIOs revealed doubts in their ability to provide fitting new IT services to drive business growth.

The Brocade report, “Global CIO Study 2015: Taking Up the Task of Business Transformation,” indicates even more CIOs question whether they are getting the most that they can out of analytics and data mining.

The report also shows employees are creating more challenges for CIOs with their appetite for accessing numerous apps from multiple devices.

For CIOs to overcome all of this, they must take advantage of what’s called the “new IP,” an enabler that accelerates business growth through innovation-centric, software-enabled networking.

“The role of IT is changing from being an administrator of infrastructure to becoming an enabler of the business–driving innovation and new ways of working to revolutionize customer engagement and transactional processes,” said Ken Cheng, CTO and senior vice president of corporate development and emerging business for Brocade.

“More than ever, the CIO has a critical role in advising the board and senior management on strategic business investments. But legacy infrastructure remains a major roadblock, prohibiting business agility and innovation. The new IP offers a way of addressing this, enabling business objectives to be met.”

Other concerns of CIOs, according to the report:

* Nearly two-thirds are concerned about internal communications and collaboration efforts.

*40% worry about choosing the right vendors to support a transformative business strategy.

* More than one-third said that cloud adoption without IT involvement isn’t allowed–but that it either does or may happen.

*79% question whether they’ll be able to support the delivery of new services to spur business growth.

Patrick K. Burke is senior editor of CIO Insight.