A wind of investment is blowing straight from the States.
Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing and Security are the items that will characterise the spending cycle for the 2016/2017 two-year period. And security, in particular, is the real driver of IT investment for 82% of the managers surveyed.
The technology spending budget in the US will grow by only 1.2% this year, compared with 3.1% last year. A significant drop that will be partly made up for in 2017, when investment is expected to rise by 2 per cent year on year. (source: Il Sole 24 Ore).
And what is the mood in Italy?
If these are the intentions declared by US IT managers, those of their Italian colleagues recorded by the CIO Survey 2016, carried out by Netconsulting cube (on behalf of Capgemini Italia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Tim) involving around seventy private organisations, reflect the “work in progress” state that characterises the process of assimilating digital transformation within Italian companies. A process whose work is nevertheless moving forward, resting on well-known pillars such as Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, Social and Internet of Things.
But is the key aspect of the issue related to technology? According to the experts, not exactly. To achieve certain goals, you need people capable of tackling the change imposed by digital with an increasingly far-sighted, managerial vision. The Chief Information Officer must open up much more to the other management roles in the organisation, starting with the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), i.e. the heads of finance and marketing.
Companies, by their nature, tend to innovate their activities incrementally, thereby managing to serve their customers better, but they often fail to introduce major changes that could help them win over new targets.
Among the many figures that emerged, we find for example that for 31% of the Italian CIOs interviewed, digital transformation will help them do what they have achieved so far better and more efficiently, while for 14% it will provide access to new markets. More than half of the sample also believes that the impact of digital technologies will create new business models, while CIOs who consider them totally irrelevant have almost disappeared (they account for 3%).
