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CIO research: Cloud complexity of growing concern

Today’s transformation can come at a price. $3.3 million on average, to be precise. That’s a lot of dollars, and our “Global CIO Report: The cost of cloud complexity” shows the concerns CIOs are facing as the cloud brings increasing complexity to IT teams, impacting IT performance, but also the opportunity this presents and how CIOs look to overcome this.

My favorite slide, that I used in nearly every one of my presentations, is a simple statement;

“You have one of the hardest jobs in the world.”

I see people nod their head, smile and sometimes pull out a phone and take a photo. Never before has software been so critical to the success of a business. As every company, and government department is pushed to digitally transform, accelerate workloads to the cloud, release better software faster, and then ensure it works perfectly across every customer interaction, the challenge to run this software increases exponentially.

But you are not alone.

Today’s transformation can come at a price. $3.3 million on average, to be precise. That’s a lot of dollars, and it’s unsurprising to find a lot of CIOs are concerned about the impact this has on their business, day-to-day operations and future. However, every cloud has a silver lining so to speak, and the rewards reaped are more often than not worth the risk.

Our “Global CIO Report: The cost of cloud complexity” shows the concerns CIOs are facing as the cloud brings increasing complexity to IT teams, impacting IT performance and the problems that come with this, but also the opportunity this presents and how CIOs look to overcome this.

IT performance problems increase with cloud-native architectures

Our report shows that digital transformation, migration to the cloud and increasing customer demands are the culprits creating a surge in IT complexity and the associated costs of managing it. As a result, CIOs from around the world have voiced their concerns about managing IT performance problems, and ultimately what this means for the future of their business. And it’s coming at a high price.

Findings from the report also show that CIOs cited factors such as lack of visibility, revenue impact and outage time have contributed to the concerns they have around their complex environments. And it’s coming at a high price.

Specifically, the report looks at how:

  • The cloud is creating a surge in IT complexity
  • The age of the customer is increasing pressure on IT teams
  • AI and automation can help overcome these challenges

The cost of cloud complexity

On the surface, these challenges CIOs continue to face may not seem all that impactful, but I wanted to share some insight and dig a little deeper into our findings to demonstrate how they are.

Our report shows that IT teams spend 33% of their time battling IT performance problems – which simply isn’t good enough. Put into financial terms, this equates to on average a staggering $3.3 million per year – a 34% increase from $2.5 million in 2018. Shocking right? And, with 74% of CIOs concerned increasing complexity will make it difficult to manage performance, that’s not all.

More specifically, our report found:

  • 49% of CIOs are concerned IT performance problems will cause a loss in revenue
  • 52% are concerned their business will suffer reputational damage
  • 44% of CIOs are concerned problems could post a threat to the existence of their business
  • 59% believe IT performance issues hinder the ability to provide good customer experience
  • 76% said they don’t have complete visibility into application performance in cloud-native architectures

It’s unsurprising the numbers are so high for concerns around the impact IT performance problems have on customers experience and business operations when, on average, organizations have suffered six IT outages where these exact concerns have been impacted in the last 12 months.

How can we combat the concerns? AI…it’s about time.

Despite the concern about the cloud increasing complexity, most CIOs said their businesses have adopted several different cloud technologies in the last twelve months; microservices, private cloud, containers and serverless computing amongst the most adopted. What’s more surprising is, this is set to increase over the next year – despite the impact CIOs already say it has on performance and the other concerns they hold.

So surely, it’s not all complexity. In fact, what I say to most organizations I talk to is this presents them with an opportunity – and one the majority of CIOs have seen.

Our research revealed that many organizations – 88% of CIOs to be precise – believe that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) will be paramount to IT’s ability to overcome this increasing complexity, and management of IT performance problems.

But it’s not quite as easy as saying “let’s use AI to help combat this complexity”. From a monitoring perspective, it’s imperative to have an AI that sees all the context of your environment.

You need something that can learn quickly, in real-time, and deliver you precise root-cause analysis in a matter of seconds. Of course, you need Dynatrace®.

Stop doing manual work. Stop trying to stare at dashboards, when Davis® can give you answers. AI is doing more than humans can comprehend, and why wouldn’t we want it to? Don’t you want to work less, but work smarter? With AI you can.

Building AI into your everyday practices will ensure you don’t face these performance problems, and if you do, it’ll tell you those problems are on their way and how to overcome them. Well, not just any old AI – Davis will.

But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Give Davis a try here, and have a read of what CIOs around the world are saying in our Global CIO Report: The cost of cloud complexity.