Clouds, Codes, and Navigating Top CIO Challenges in 2024
Technology’s role in business is growing at lightning speed, driven by the advent of artificial intelligence, the growth of hybrid and multicloud infrastructures, and the shift to hybrid work environments. Every company’s ability to deliver value and enable growth relies more heavily than ever on how well it uses and manages technology.
In a global survey of IT and business decision-makers conducted by Riverbed, 92% of respondents said IT is more responsible for business innovation than it was three years ago. That puts increasing pressure on CIOs to keep the lights on and drive business value.
The Possibilities and Perils of AI
Even though AI is in its infancy, it is already proving its value to organizations. A survey by GitHub found that 92% of developers were using AI coding tools and that 70% of them saw improved code quality, faster completion times, and quicker incident resolution.
But AI can hallucinate, and AI models learn coding by using existing code, which at times contains flaws. When using AI for code creation, CIOs should ensure that human developers who are trained in secure coding check the AI-generated code before it goes into production. This is true of using AI for anything, but it is especially true for checking code used to hunt cybersecurity threats.
Other proven AI applications include monitoring critical applications to identify performance issues and other problems. Observability solutions use analytics, correlation, and automated runbooks to deliver insights and allow IT staff to troubleshoot, identify, and resolve issues, often without human intervention. However, to operate without human intervention, AI models must be trained using small tasks that build into larger families of autonomous solutions.
Training and upskilling staff are critical to realizing AI’s benefits. Organizations must deliver agile AI training programs to help staff solve real-world problems. As the IT staffing shortage crisis still looms, companies may have to take more of the instructional burden or AI training than they have with other technologies.
Bolstering Security and Refining Zero Trust
An increasingly central component of cybersecurity is adopting a zero-trust strategy, which assumes that any user or device on the network is suspect and requires continuous authorization and authentication. However, by enforcing continuous validation and least-privilege policies, organizations lose visibility in the applications they are trying to protect. The tunneling of data required when using Secure Access Server Edge (SASE), which is very common in cloud architectures, prevents IT and security teams from seeing what’s happening. Hence, they cannot identify performance problems or what’s causing them.
Observability helps eliminate the black box effect created by remote work, public clouds, and encrypted architectures such as Zero Trust environments by identifying which users are having issues, the severity of the issue, how users are accessing applications, and the specific problem area (ISP, VPN, or specific gateways).
The Power of DEX
The digital employee experience (DEX) is increasingly essential for attracting and retaining talent, which helps address the skills shortage many companies face.
Ninety-five percent of business and IT decision-makers in Riverbed’s survey said that providing a seamless DEX is important — 56% said it was critically important — especially to younger generations increasingly making up a larger workforce share. Sixty-eight percent of leaders said they believed that younger workers would leave the company if their digital experiences were not up to snuff, and 63% said that poor DEX would impact the company’s productivity, reputation, and performance.
Understanding the network’s health is essential for DEX, and high-functioning companies use observability combined with surveys to create a feedback loop to know how employees experience the network.
Sustainable Technology
In recent years, sustainability has gone from an excellent idea to a priority issue for many organizations. Sustainability is not only good for the environment; it’s beneficial for the bottom line. One McKinsey study found that products that adhered to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) guidelines showed higher growth rates than others.
Mandates on greenhouse gas emissions have become stricter in the United States as international partners pursue net zero goals. At the same time, new ESG regulations have also emerged. Meanwhile, companies face added pressure from customers and other businesses that emphasize going green.
Organizations must manage sustainability proactively. Users are consuming more energy with the continued shift toward digital processes, especially with the emergence of AI. They are also beginning to monitor power use down to the device level. Correlating this type of data can provide actionable insights on reducing power consumption, such as identifying when devices not in use are still running and even sending users proactive messages on how to use less power.
Hurdles for Today’s CIO
CIOs are challenged with making technology a business driver despite obstacles beyond their control, including staffing pressures and technical debt.
In Riverbed’s survey, 37% of IT and business decision-makers said they faced a shortage of IT personnel, and 41% said the IT personnel they did have lacked critical skill sets. As CIOs face a shortage of skilled personnel and a misalignment of skills, IT systems have become incredibly layered and overly complex. Throw the pressure to deploy AI and safeguard networks against cyberattacks into the mix, and you would think that job satisfaction is down. But it’s not.
It’s exciting, although challenging, to be a CIO. New technologies are changing what’s possible. The only key is knowing what to prioritize.
