SoftwareOne Study: 83% of CIOs Need to Do More with Less in 2023

SoftwareOne Office People

A recent study by SoftwareOne, a global supplier of cloud solutions and software, has revealed that 83% of chief information officers (CIOs) will need to accomplish more with fewer resources in 2023. The ‘CIO Pulse: 2023 budgets & priorities’ study surveyed 600 C-suite and IT decision-makers in the UK and the USA to examine how the current state of the global economy is impacting IT priorities.

The study found that while 93% of CIOs expect IT budgets to increase in 2023, 83% are under pressure to make their budgets stretch further than ever before. The study revealed a focus on improved cloud cost management and tackling the reduction of mounting technical debt.

Of the CIOs surveyed, 72% acknowledged that they are falling behind in their digital transformation efforts due to technological debt. The study highlighted that 92% of CIOs are anticipated to execute digital transformation initiatives that serve as revenue generators this year, making this finding particularly concerning.

The study revealed that 38% of respondents said that the accumulation of this debt is largely due to rushed cloud migrations during the pandemic, and 31% of respondents admitted that they did not optimize their workloads before beginning the migration process. A further 38% disclosed that their company’s cloud budget was incorrectly determined during the provisioning process, which led to substantial overspending on the cloud.

Management of Cloud Expenses

Craig Thomson, SVP of Cloud and Application Services
“For organizations to maintain their level of competitiveness, they need to migrate to the cloud and update their legacy applications,” said Craig Thomson, SVP of Cloud and Application Services.

The complexity of legacy IT is one of the top three challenges currently faced by companies, according to 51% of CIOs surveyed. The study also revealed that companies still make use of multiple on-premises IT legacy systems.

According to Craig Thomson, SoftwareOne’s Senior Vice President of Cloud and Application Services, “Businesses are operating in an economic climate that is fraught with unpredictability, making it difficult for them to plan significant IT infrastructure overhauls. However, in order for organizations to maintain their level of competitiveness, they need to migrate to the cloud and update their legacy applications.”

The study by SoftwareOne also found that 45% of CIOs believe that increased transparency and management of cloud expenses would help them generate greater value from their cloud investments, which would in turn enhance business buy-in. To accomplish this, 80% of companies say they will increase their investment in FinOps, and 39% of companies say they will use cloud-native tools to cut down on licensing expenses. In spite of the constraints placed on their budgets, 82% of respondents plan to increase their investment in application modernization.

Security remains a priority, with 92% increasing expenditure in this sector. Dan Ortman, who is the Global Practice Lead for FinOps at SoftwareOne, said, “The upcoming year is going to be a challenging one for businesses all over the world. Companies will be able to more effectively respond to unforeseen shifts in the market thanks to the increased agility that comes with using cloud computing. Adopting FinOps practices will assist them in optimizing not only their expenditures but also the processes, accountability, and transparency that are necessary to derive the greatest possible value from their cloud investment. Once traditional IT has been transferred and modernized, and cloud computing has been optimized, any savings can be reinvested into innovative projects that enable the IT team to accomplish more with fewer resources.”