VMware Study identifies CIO priorities in India for the Next Three Years

VMware has announced key findings from a VMware-commissioned study that identifies key CIO priorities in India for the next three years. Conducted by Kantar IMRB, the study suggests how IT/Data security is a key challenge organizations face in the mobile cloud era and how most organizations surveyed are keen to adopt cloud computing to enhance business agility and efficiency – hence information security and cloud services will have maximum impact on businesses during the next 3–5 years.

As per the research findings, even though organizations are progressively looking for a modern business environment, they are concerned about having a proper security environment in place owing to the open nature of the Internet and increasing cyber threats. 86 per cent of organizations see their IT budget increasing over the next three years and 80 per cent of businesses are willing to invest time, money and skill on cloud services.

The study surveyed IT leaders and decision-makers from a number of Indian companies across various verticals, ranging from medium-sized enterprises to very large organizations. Each respondent was interviewed via a structured questionnaire on their business and IT priorities for their organizations in the next three years, including:

*         What they would like to see from IT vendors

*         The role of cloud computing in their businesses

*         Their outlook on their organization’s IT budget spend

* Companies are willing to invest time, money and skills on cloud services and currently the adoption of the public cloud is high compared to that of private/hybrid cloud. Only basic data such as emails, messaging services, CRM are stored on the public cloud owing to data security concerns

* Study findings reveal that very large enterprises (80 per cent), large enterprises (83 per cent) and medium enterprises (82 per cent) are likely to invest in private cloud. Likewise, a high majority of them are also keen to invest in public and hybrid cloud.

* While business and performance is a key priority, the study indicates that IT security is now a major concern and has gone up the business priorities list.

* 87 per cent of respondents in the IT/ ITeS/ Telecom sector; 55 per cent of respondents in the manufacturing sector; 64 per cent in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); 53 per cent in government/public sector/defence; and 65 per cent from other services agree IT security is amongst the top business priorities.

* Apart from CIOs’ focus on IT operational efficiency and improvement of IT agility, managing security and compliance risk is gaining prominence as a top IT priority for companies

* 61 per cent of respondents from BFSI and 57 per cent of respondents from IT/ ITeS/ telecom rank managing security and compliance high owing to the nature of their business.

* Despite increase in IT budgets in very large enterprises, CIOs are unhappy as the budget is either insufficient nor aligned properly.

* Findings also indicate that respondents from the government (70 per cent) and BFSI (67 per cent) feel that budget for security should increase by 25 per cent over the next year.

* Losing customers’ trust and public disclosure of sensitive data are considered as main concerns by organizations

* 87 per cent of organizations’ security team want to have business data safe from breaches and secure against cyber-attacks.

* Organizations are extensively looking at new technology trends like anytime, anywhere any device access to business applications, enterprise mobility etc, to provide greater work flexibility to their employees.

“With nearly 25 per cent of all IT workloads being managed in the cloud today, and the number expected to double by 2021, it is evident that the traditional on-premises IT environment is undergoing a profound change. Today, CIOs play an extremely essential role in their organization’s IT, and it is of utmost importance to have enterprise data available always – anytime and anywhere while tightly secured,” said Arun Parameswaran, managing director, VMware India. “This study brings to light what CIOs should look out for in the next three years where new security approaches are needed as data center infrastructures increasingly move to the cloud.”