Virtualisation and analytics top priorities for Australian and New Zealand (A/NZ) CIOs

Results from a global study of more than 2500 CIOs released by IBM reveal that using virtualisation to gain a competitive advantage and improve efficiency is now the top priority for A/NZ CIOs. Of the 129 A/NZ CIO respondents, almost 98% cited virtualisation as the key tool to enhance their organisation's competiveness, compared with 77% of all CIOs surveyed.

This was closely followed by 94% of A/NZ CIOs who identified business intelligence and analytics as the next best way to enhance their organisation's competitiveness compared with 83% globally. With an increased focus on virtualisation and data analytics, the study also revealed that data reliability and security have emerged as increasingly urgent concerns, with 83% of A/NZ CIOs planning to make additional investments in risk management and compliance, compared with 72% globally. The survey also revealed that already 39% of A/NZ CIOs view cloud computing as strategic and plan to implement it, even in the technology’s relatively early stages.

Other key findings of the survey include:

• CIOs in A/NZ businesses enjoy more influence on business strategy when compared with the global results, 77% of A/NZ CIOs hold a seat on the senior management team, while only 54% have the privilege of this influence across the world.
• Green IT is viewed as a key strategic focus for AN/Z CIOs (67%).
• 78% of A/NZ CIOs (76% globally) anticipate building a strongly centralised infrastructure in the next five years. Furthermore, 53% of A/NZ CIOs (56% globally) are expecting to implement completely standardised, low-cost business processes.
• Even as they build these standardised low cost infrastructures, CIOs are able to focus 55% of their time on activities that drive innovation and growth - 45% in A/NZ.
• The remaining 45% (55% in A/NZ) is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment, including reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to lower costs elsewhere in the business.
• 85% of A/NZ CIOs said they believe their customer and business partner relationships and integration will be key to success, while globally almost 68% of respondents agreed partner collaboration will drive success.

“CIOs are sharpening the focus on building smarter infrastructures and improving business efficiency,” said Matt English, A/NZ Smarter Planet Leader, IBM Global Business Services. “This study provides insight into critical strategies for both today and the future, whether it’s transforming organisational processes or taking advantage of client and market opportunities across the region and around the globe.”

The study, titled ‘The New Voice of the CIO’, represents the insights and vision of more than 2500 CIOs from 78 countries, 19 industries and organisations of every size. The study reinforces the increasingly strategic role that CIOs are playing as visionary and business leaders and as drivers of innovation and financial growth. As the role of the CIO itself transforms so do the types of projects they lead across their enterprises, allowing CIOs to focus less time and resources on running internal infrastructure, and more time on transformation to help their companies grow revenue.

The study confirms that CIOs are transforming their infrastructure to focus more on innovation and business value, rather than simply running IT. In the study, CIOs also identified the top visionary projects that they are working on now or foresee implementing in the future, ranging from process improvement to taking advantage of technologies that can provide immediate and long-term financial impact. The study also confirmed that CIOs are focusing on mobility solutions and unified communications, collaboration and social networking tools, and Web 2.0 projects, to enable more effective communications for employees, customers and partners.