Three out of every four CIOs say their network is a barrier to achieving their organization's goals and, for the remainder, it is a "significant" issue, a new survey by Vanson Bourne shows.
The study, commissioned by Brocade, covered interviews with 200 CIOs from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States in late 2014. Among them, 81% work for organizations that have between 500 and 5,000 employees.
Results reveal that CIOs are distracted by the business of keeping the lights on. Over half spend more than 50% of their time reactively, citing network downtime/availability as one of the most likely reasons.
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.
Also, 40% of CIOs claim to be concerned about choosing the right vendors to deliver what the business is asking.
"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,” Ken Cheng, CTO and SVP of corporate development and emerging business for Brocade. “The New IP offers a way of addressing this, enabling business objectives to be met."
On the topic of cloud, the survey found that over one-third of respondents state that cloud adoption without involvement from IT is not allowed but does or may happen anyway.
Also, 83% of CIOs believe procurement of cloud services without IT engagement will increase. This leads to fears about job security for 82% of CIOs, and one in five find such activities causing them extreme stress.
When asked what most worries them in their role,79% pointed to the delivery of new services to support business growth.