Red Hat Survey Reveals Common Obstacles for IT Leaders

A “CIOs at a Technology and Cultural Crossroads” survey announced by Red Hat reveals obstacles that remain, even before the vision of true IT and business integration can be fully realized. CIOs and other IT executives have made significant progress in their long-standing efforts to tightly align and coordinate their IT departments with their organizations’ business units.
The survey, commissioned by Red Hat through CIO Strategic Marketing Services /IDG Research Services polled 100 respondents at the IT director level and above at organizations with 1,000 or more employees about the current and future roles of CIOs. The survey results provide insight into the progress CIOs and other IT executives have made in assuming more strategic roles as well as into the challenges they continue to face but also raises fundamental questions about how CIOs can best drive business innovation within their companies and even suggests that getting the business and IT together may take something as fundamental as rethinking the CIO position itself.
 Currently, many CIOs and other IT executives spend much of their time “keeping the lights on,” with 48 and 47 percent of respondents of selecting “improving IT operations / system performance,” and “implementing new systems and architectures” as one of their top five areas of focus, respectively. Despite these day-to-day demands, many IT executives surveyed also manage to engage in a variety of business activities, including 45 percent of survey respondents who note that they currently spend time aligning IT initiatives with business goals.
 In the coming years, IT executives want to spend more time contributing to business strategy, according to survey results. When asked where they would like to spend more time in the next three to five years, survey respondents indicated that they would like to identify opportunities for competitive differentiation (48 percent); cultivate the IT / business partnership (42 percent); drive business innovation (41 percent); align IT initiatives with business goals (35 percent); and develop and refine business strategy (32 percent).