Network, an impediment for 75% CIOs: Brocade study

BANGALORE: Seventy-five percent of CIO found network an issue when it comes to achieving their organization's goals and almost a quarter of CIOs polled it a "significant" issue in a survey commissioned by Brocade.

It said that critical infrastructure issues prevent CIOs from addressing fundamental business requirements.

The Brocade Global CIO survey 2015 said that continued rise of new technologies, which fundamentally change the way businesses operate and engage with their customers, are responsible for a dramatic renaissance of the IT department. This has led to CIOs facing a range of challenges to contend with, and ultimately highlights a clear need for them to understand and embrace the opportunities offered by the IP.

Ken Cheng, CTO and Senior VP of Corporate Development and Emerging Business for Brocade, said, "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. 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."

The survey, conducted by independent research agency Vanson Bourne, polled 200 CIOs across six countries, said:
“CIOs are distracted by the business of keeping the lights on. Over half spend more than 50 percent of their time reactively citing network downtime/availability as one of the most likely reasons especially for CIOs with more than 1,000 employees in their organization.”

It also stressed on the fact that CIOs top concerns are security and fast deployment of and access to new applications and services, more than big data and analytics, communication and collaboration, or compliance with regulations.

The top four technology issues CIOs need to address are: operational platforms (Oracle, SAP), data center upgrade/expansion, virtual, security, network upgrade/expansion.

Fourty percent of CIOs claimed to be concerned about choosing the right vendors to deliver what the business is asking, it said. Meanwhile, 83 percent of CIOs believed procurement of cloud services without IT engagement will increase and 82 percent admitted this leads to fears about their job security, and one in five find such activities cause them extreme stress.