CIOs are Feeling Stressed Out

CIOs are getting pretty stressed out.

Companies’ top techies are feeling the pressure to be innovative while working under tight

budget restrictions, according to a survey of CIOs done by Gartner Programs, a unit of

analyst firm Gartner, Inc.

”Being more cost effective, reducing business risk and innovating faster are extremely

difficult to achieve concurrently,” says Ellen Kitzis, group vice president for Gartner

Programs. ”Together, they risk breaking the budget. For CIOs, it means adding redundancy to

address business risks, which increases their costs.”

According to the Gartner survey, cost pressures are the leading business driver for CIOs,

who noted that the combination of security and risk management concerns mixed with the need

for faster innovation is increasing their stress levels.

The survey also shows that priorities have changed.

Customer relationship management, knowledge management and even satisfying stakeholders have

all taken a backseat to a new list of must-do initiatives, such as business continuity,

privacy and keeping pace with other businesses.

”IT governance is about ensuring the right people are making the right decisions for the

business and being held accountable,” says Kitzis. ”CIOs have to be multilingual and act

as the pivot point, achieving business goals through informed decision making,

implementation and accountability.”

In comparing business and IT budgets, the CIOs surveyed said business operating budgets are

growing faster than IT budgets. Gartner analysts said there are two ways to look at the

trend. One is that there is business skepticism around how effective IT investments have

been. The other angle is that many enterprises have genuinely been able to reduce costs

without reducing their business impact.

Management priorities also are changing.

From a management perspective, CIOs now rank ”providing guidance for the board and

executives” as the top priority in 2003. That’s quite a jump in the ranking. In 2002,it was

ranked as the sixth priority.

”CIOs are providing guidance to these key executives, while continuing to demonstrate the

business value of IS and IT,” says Kitzis. ”They are also spending time on a new focus

area this year: IT governance. As enterprises become more complex and IT a big budget item,

the role of IT governance is becoming critical.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020