Global ICT research and consulting firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has laid out the ten most important shifts that will happen in IT organizations over the next 36 months and will guide senior IT executives in the formation of their three-year strategic IT plans.

To help CIOs and IT executives successfully lead their organisations through the accelerating process of digital transformation, IDC has unveiled its latest IDC FutureScape predictions at the monthly CIOMajlis meeting in Dubai.

Addressing the tenth CIOMajlis held at Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, Olivier Schaller, associate vice president for IDC's IT executive programs, offered guidance on managing the impact of these predictions on IT investment priorities and implementation strategies.

CIOMajlis, an initiative by Smartworld, an Etisalat and Dubai South joint venture company, aims to contribute to realising the vision of the National Innovative Strategy with the goal of making the UAE the world’s most innovative country by 2021.

Abdulqader Obaid Ali, chief executive officer, Smartworld, said:  “I believe it is a great initiative of CIOMajlis to do benchmarking. Companies are beginning to feel more comfortable with each other and it is very necessary where they can start sharing their information. I think the time is right now because we need to find a benchmark. It is truly a measure to see where you are compared to the rest and find to improve yourselves. This is the whole purpose of the CIO Majlis.”



Titled ‘IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2017 Predictions’, the 10 predictions:

By 2019, 40 per cent of IT projects will create new digital services and revenue streams that monetize data;

Lack of vision, credibility, or ability to influence will keep 40 per cent of CIOs from attaining leadership roles in enterprise DX (digital transformation) by 2017;

By 2019, 75 per cent of CIOs will recognize the limitations of traditional IT and embrace a leadership approach that embodies a virtuous cycle of innovation (Leading in 3D);

By 2021, one third of CEOs and COOs of Fortune 2000 companies will have spent at least five years of their career in a technology leadership role;

By 2018, 45 per cent of CIOs will focus on platformization using DevOps for rapid development, cost reduction, and enterprise agility;

By 2017, 80 per cent of CIOs will drive global risk portfolios that enable adaptive responses to security, compliance, business, or catastrophic threats; and

By 2019, 40 per cent of digital transformation initiatives will be supported by Cognitive/AI capabilities, providing critical insights for new operating and monetization models;

By 2018, 65 per cent of IT organizations will create new customer-facing and ecosystem-facing services to meet the business DX needs;

By 2018, 40 per cent of CIOs will advance DX initiatives by building organizational linkages with line of business (LOB) technology teams and across IT organizational silos, empowering changes in thinking, culture, and practices; and

By 2019, 80 per cent of bimodal IT organizations will accumulate a crippling technical debt resulting in spiralling complexity, costs, and lost credibility.

Waseq Ahsan, director, IDC Executive Programs, in his presentation, proposed a pilot project in collaboration with CIO efforts to test and trial metric collection and develop a set of benchmarks and fine tune the process before rolling it out across the UAE and the wider region.

Ahmed Al Mulla, chairman of CIOMajlis, who is also Senior Vice President, Corporate Services, Emirates Global Aluminium, said: “Today all companies in the GCC region want to do benchmarking. They don’t have reference data. All managements are looking for this. Even the companies that are doing the benchmarking or doing service are actually international companies. To do it through CIOMajlis, which comprises local companies, we will first of all have more credibility. Companies are not looking for thousands of data, they look for a few data that are relevant to their industry. Companies come and say are we are spending enough on security or too much on security.”

"One of the issues in IT is that technology gets replaced very fast. Technology predictions help us to be aligned with new technology and trends. My advice to CIOs is that you be aligned with others, because the situation is 'innovate or die',” Al Mulla added. – TradeArabia News Service