Cloud thoughts
IT vs. Business Roles in the Cloud and Mobile Era
A new study finds that a large percentage of IT pros and business execs believe decisions about technology focus more intensely on business objectives.
Budget Control
Only 19% of companies said IT still owns the entire tech budget. Business units often have their own funds: discretionary (33%), split evenly with the IT function (20%), the majority of the budget (9%) or complete control (19%).
Decision-Making
57% of business execs said tech objectives are more business-focused, compared with 48% of IT respondents. What’s more, 33% of business respondents said the final decision on technology is made outside the IT function, compared with 29% of IT respondents.
IT Confidence Remains High
79% of IT respondents are “extremely” or “highly” confident in their ability to apply technology to business goals.
IT Still Drives Decisions
70% of all respondents said IT still has a primary role in tech decisions, while 28% believe it’s a level playing field for all departments.
New Business Goals
54% of all respondents said the top criteria for new systems is to improve innovation/build new products, followed by reaching new customers/markets (51%), speeding up processes and operations (49%), improving internal communications (40%) and lowering overall cost (40%).
Gaining Knowledge
Business units are gaining knowledge about available technology from personal research (53%), internal IT department (51%), business events (47%), technology events (41%), peers (38%) and third-party firms (34%).
Rogue IT
Only 41% of business units with their own technology budget use it to procure technology on their own or start independent projects with outside firms.
Positive Relationships
52% of business respondents believe “there is a good relationship between the IT function and all business units,” and 44% said “the IT function plays a critical support role in our organization.”
Becoming Better Partners
60% of business respondents would like IT to have better knowledge of business objectives, better communications of IT concerns (52%), accept/explore ideas from business units (50%), make proactive tech recommendations (45%) and build a catalog of services (32%).
Learning Curve
Integration is still difficult with cloud/mobile adoption. Top difficulties include integration taking longer than expected (45%) and integration costs exceeding budget (37%).
Mobility Drivers
The top changes mobility is driving in front-end systems include increased demand for workflow efficiency (42%), greater development effort (41%), greater focus on user experience (41%) and new processes for mobility availability (39%).
Data Challenges
The biggest factors contributing to data challenges include the skill level of analytics tools (49%), tracking data through various systems (46%), storing large volumes of data (46%) and extracting data from new sources (46%).
Security Concerns
The biggest factors contributing to security challenges include understanding the new threat landscape (57%), preparing plans for possible breaches (48%), integrating new technology for security (48%) and educating the workforce on security issues (45%).
Cloud Changes
The cloud is driving changes in data storage (40%), expectation for lower costs (35%), less tolerance for downtime (34%) and new processes for migrating cloud systems (33%).