Organisations unprepared for IT needs of the future - IBM

Organisations are not prepared for the future IT needs of the business and nearly all are moving to advance their transition to cloud infrastructure, according to new research from IBM.

According to the research, 60% of IT leaders say their company's IT modernisation programme is not yet ready for the future. Nearly a quarter of CIOs and CTOs (24%) surveyed say their company is just starting its IT modernisation journey or has yet to begin modernising, with about a third surveyed saying they are still in the midst of transformation.

\As a result, more than 95% of IT leaders surveyed said they are looking to adopt public, hybrid or private cloud strategies. Of those, many are moving at an aggressive pace -- the study reveals that 53% of respondents are aggressively pursuing a public cloud strategy, 48% a hybrid cloud strategy and 45% a private cloud strategy.

"Our clients are looking to accelerate IT modernisation by leveraging cloud models - both public and hybrid, data, AI, automation and other key technologies to help shape, scale and manage more effectively massive, complex, global architectures," says Archana Vemulapalli, general manager, IBM Infrastructure Services - Offerings and CTO.

"In this rapidly changing digital business environment, organisations can bring in the right technology and the right partners to help aggregate, integrate, build and maintain a scalable digital business, while also enforcing effective governance."

The pressures on IT infrastructures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have further accelerated the need for cloud infrastructure, professional skills development, and security upgrades, the survey found. More than 60% of technology leaders surveyed say they expect increased demand for cloud infrastructure to be permanent.

Even as IT leaders are feeling increased urgency to accelerate their organisations' transformation, migrating to a multi-cloud environment can present significant challenges to organisations with legacy applications running large data pools.

 What's more, many surveyed technology leaders are not sure they have the right teams in place. A full 40% of survey respondents do not feel their teams have the right skills to fully meet their IT ambitions, and more than three in four surveyed say they will rely more on trusted partners that can provide managed infrastructure services.

Most CIOs and CTOs (67%) surveyed cite the need for increased infrastructure flexibility as driving the digital transformation, followed by the need for competitive advantage (61%), cost savings (58%), increasing globalisation (54%) and meeting client demands (45%).

While the majority (60%) of CIOs and CTOs surveyed say their company's IT modernisation is not yet ready for the future, the study revealed significant differences in the U.S. and U.K. markets. For example, while approximately 56% of U.S. respondents say they are aggressively moving their IT infrastructure to hybrid cloud, only 38% of respondents in the U.K. describe their approach as aggressive.

And while 56% of CIOs/CTOs surveyed in the U.S. say their IT infrastructures were completely prepared for the business changes brought on by COVID-19, only 23% of U.K. managers surveyed felt as prepared.