South African chief information officers (CIOs) have upped IT spending since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is one of the biggest takeaways from the ITWeb Brainstorm CIO 2022 Survey now in its ninth year.
Run in partnership with MTN Business, the survey findings were presented yesterday at the annual ITWeb Brainstorm CIO Banquet, held at Inanda Club in Johannesburg.
The other biggest finding was that increasingly local CIOs are fully embracing hyperscale public cloud services.
The preliminary survey findings were presented last night by Adrian Hinchcliffe, ITWeb Brainstorm editor-in-chief.
The ongoing survey captures input from CIOs, or equivalent C-level execs, and the full research report will be published in early 2023 and will be available free of charge to all valid survey respondents.
Over 100 CIOs participated in the survey.
Last year, the survey found that confidence was growing in corporate South Africa about the power of technology and the competence of the CIO. This, as the past few years have fuelled incredible changes in the digital transformation and cloud journeys of most organisations.
Digital transformation shift
According to the survey, 40% of respondents indicated that they have increased their IT spending since the pandemic hit.
With this result, Hinchcliffe believes it indicates that “a shift to digital transformation across South African organisations is now actually happening”.
The survey findings correspond with a recent McKinsey report, which shows that globally, the pandemic sped up the adoption of digital technologies by several years. It adds that to meet new demands brought by the pandemic, companies are making digital and technology investments across their business models.
Asked by ITWeb Brainstorm about their current budget compared to last year, 36% of local CIOs said their budget is above inflation, 38% revealed that it’s in line with inflation, while 10% noted that it’s down.
“Comparing that same data to the results from last year’s survey, there’s been an overall rise in budgets this year; and those reporting flat or declining budgets are fewer,” said Hinchcliffe.
Looking ahead, 80% of the CIOs said they’re expecting to see some form of increase in budgets next year.
According to the study, only 68% of 2021’s survey respondents expected budget increases in the year ahead, versus the 80% from this year. “In general, it does seem spending projections are growing, and there is more positivity,” Hinchcliffe noted.
On the correlation of CIO’s experience and likelihood to secure better budgets, he said: “Of the most experienced CIOs (over 10 years’ experience), the majority are the most positive about seeing some level of increase in budget.”
Looking at the leading focus areas for the next two years, executing the digital strategy was the top response, followed by security, process automation, customer experience and cloud and skills.
Hyperscale trust grows
The other biggest take away from the study is trust in hyperscale public cloud services is growing among local CIOs with the majority of them admitting to ‘already using’ the platforms. 62% of the respondents said they were using it this year versus only 35% last year.
This, as a number of hyperscalers have launched local data centres in the country. These include multinationals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Google is also looking to open a cloud region in South Africa imminently, giving local CIOs a variety of choices to choose from.
Some 78% of the participants revealed that they have deployed some business critical workloads into the cloud.
“This was a new question this year, but I bet the answer to this would have been very different before the pandemic,” Hinchcliffe said. “It just goes to show how our levels and trust in and reliance on the cloud have changed.”
The CIOs also revealed their cyber security fears in the study, saying ransomware, data theft as well as targeted or advanced attacks are among their biggest worries.
“From last year, we can see ransomware was the top threat, but it has come down,” Hinchcliffe commented. “Phishing, the second top concern, also decreased quite dramatically; and this year it’s fourth. Data theft and targeted or advanced attacks have both grown significantly.”
Giving his final thoughts, Hinchcliffe pointed out that most CIOs seem to be in the midst of executing their digital transformation strategies, albeit largely in what he terms ‘foundational stages’.
“We said last year, the pandemic opened the door for selling the vision of digital transformation, now the focus is working with the business to determine what delivering that vision means in practice. This year, CIOs have been more focused on being team leaders and influencing business strategy; they’re spending time optimising and digitising business processes, and discussing business and tech strategy with the CEO, board and CFO.
“Security and governance are taking up less of the CIO’s time now, but securing data and systems is a top tech priority for the organisation, which indicates a strengthened organisational awareness and resourced cyber team.
“Cloud adoption has grown significantly and there’s a greater demand for skills, particularly analytics, cyber and software development. And from what the CIOs are telling us, there’s greater positivity about increased IT budgets and spending looking ahead,” he concluded.
To view the preliminary results click here.
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