IT security is by far the top technology priority for businesses, according to the annual Business & Technology Priorities 2016 survey from IT solutions and managed services provider EACS, which is now available to download here. Their most important business priority is improving efficiency, followed by delivering operating results, increasing productivity and reducing enterprise costs.
The online survey polled CIOs, IT directors and IT managers in businesses of all sizes ranging from SMEs to large enterprises. In-depth discussions with CIOs who participated in the research highlighted the constantly changing nature of the security threat and the growth of targeted attacks as key to their security concerns. Despite the best preventive measures, they accepted that no organisation can be 100 per cent secure - which may explain why disaster recovery was second in the list of technology priorities.
Looking at the business priorities, Mike Dearlove, Managing Director of EACS, points out that this is not a transformational agenda but is all about doing more with less. He said: “Organisations are still under enormous pressure to get more from their existing IT resources, rather than make major strategic changes. It’s about doing the basics well and working more efficiently.”
“On the technology front the results are no surprise as we are seeing customers across all sectors coming to us for advice on how to safeguard their systems against hackers and malware. The best organisations will find ways to synchronise their technology and create an integrated three phase security strategy: prevent, detect and remediate.”
Technology priorities
Following the trend of the previous three years, security is a long way in front as the respondents’ highest technology priority. High availability and disaster recovery, user experience, cloud computing and mobility followed closely behind for the third year in a row as employees embrace the use of more flexible working for staff.
Interestingly take-up of digitisation and out-tasking were at the bottom of the technology priorities list as businesses grapple with more urgent issues. “We expect that this will change over the coming years as IT managers see the benefit of bringing in organisations such as EACS to handle routine IT so that the firms can focus on adding value to their business,” concludes Dearlove.
Business priorities
Improving efficiency was rated the top business priority for the fourth year running. The related and often over-lapping areas of delivering operational results, increasing productivity and reducing enterprise costs are the next highest business priorities. At the other end of the spectrum, creating new products and services, expanding into new markets, and improving marketing and sales effectiveness are all considered to be the respondents’ lowest priorities.
Technology barriers
Budgets, staff resources and time were very clearly the top three barriers preventing the respondents from implementing the technologies identified as key priorities – which is where organisations such as EACS can help. There was then a considerable gap before reaching the second tier of barriers which comprised attitude to risk, skills to deploy and a lack of business buy-in.
