CIOs will invest more time, money and skills in security, cloud over the next 3 years: Study

VMware study identifies key CIO priorities in India for the next three years. Conducted by Kantar IMRB, the study suggests how IT/ Data security is a key challenge organizations face in the mobile cloud era and how most organizations surveyed are keen to adopt cloud computing to enhance business agility and efficiency – hence information security and cloud services will have maximum impact on businesses in the next 3-5 years.

As per the research findings, even though organizations are progressively looking for a modern business environment, they are concerned about having a proper security environment in place owing to the open nature of the Internet and increasing cyber threats. 86% of organizations see their IT budget increasing over the next 3 years and 80% of businesses are willing to invest time, money and skill on cloud services.

The study surveyed IT leaders and decision makers from a number of Indian companies across various verticals, ranging from medium-sized enterprises to very large organizations. Each respondent was interviewed via a structured questionnaire on their business and IT priorities for their organizations in the next three years, including:

• What they would like to see from IT vendors
• The role of cloud computing in their businesses
• Their outlook on their organization’s IT budget spend

The key insights highlighted in the survey include:

• Companies are willing to invest time, money and skills on cloud services and currently the adoption of the public cloud is high compared to that of private/hybrid cloud. Only basic data, such as emails, messaging services, CRM are stored on the public cloud owing to data security concerns
• Study findings reveal that very large enterprises (80%), large enterprises (83%) and medium enterprises (82%) are likely to invest in private cloud. Likewise, a high majority of them are also keen to invest in public and hybrid cloud.
• While business and performance is a key priority, the study indicates IT security is now a major concern and has gone up the business priorities list
• 87% of respondents in the IT/ ITeS/ Telecom sector; 55% of respondents in the manufacturing sector; 64% in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); 53% in government/public sector/defence; and 65% from other services agree IT security is amongst the top business priorities.
• Apart from the CIO’s focus on IT operational efficiency and improvement of IT agility, managing security and compliance risk is gaining prominence as a top IT priority for companies
• 61% of respondents from BFSI and 57% of respondents from IT/ ITeS/ Telecom rank managing security and compliance high owing to the nature of their business.
• Despite increase in IT budgets in very large enterprises, CIOs are unhappy as the budget is either insufficient nor aligned properly 
• Findings also indicate that respondents from the government (70%) and BFSI (67%) feel that budget for security should increase by 25% over the next year.
• Losing customers’ trust and public disclosure of sensitive data are considered as main concerns by organization
• 87% of organizations’ security team want to have business data safe from breaches and secure against cyber-attacks
• Organizations are extensively looking at new technology trends like anytime, anywhere any device access to business applications, enterprise mobility, etc., to provide greater work flexibility to their employees

“With nearly 25% of all IT workloads being managed in the cloud today, and the number expected to double by 2021, it is evident that the traditional on-premises IT environment is undergoing a profound change. Today, CIOs play an extremely essential role in their organization’s IT, and it is of utmost importance to have enterprise data available always – anytime and anywhere while tightly secured,” said Arun Parameswaran, Managing Director, VMware India. “This study brings to light what CIOs should look out for in the next three years wherenew security approaches are needed as data center infrastructures increasingly move to the cloud.”

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