Cisco Survey Reveals the Biggest Challenges for Global IT Teams
It's no understatement that the work-from-home phenomenon has been a challenge like no other for IT professionals.
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The Cisco survey found that two in five (61%) CIOs and ITDMs acknowledge they don’t have a crystal ball. But almost all (89%) find this to be essential: maintaining security, control and governance across networks, clouds, applications and user devices.
Almost as many (86%) believe a distributed workforce needs seamless access to applications, along with a high-quality collaborative experience.
Meantime, the threat landscape is expanding with the work-from-home phenomenon. An overwhelming number (88%) of those polled say you must secure remote work tools and protect customer/employee data in such a situation.
Did you know there’s a difference between user satisfaction and user delight? CIOs and ITDMs in the survey do, as more than three in four said user experience should focus on delight.
How to determine that?
Nearly nine in 10 (89%) of those surveyed said it’s important to ensure a consistent application performance across both the application and infrastructure. Another 86% said the infrastructure should be as dynamic as the application software. This will meet the changing policy and optimization needs of both the application and the developer.
A whopping 90%, while agreeing that user delight is important, said you must main application-to-infrastructure security to meet compliance. But don’t slow down the business or that user delight rating might fall.
The cable provider added a virtual network function for the secure access service edge (SASE).
Comcast Business already offers a software-defined networking platform called ActiveCore that delivers a variety of VNFs. But now the platform includes a virtual version of Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Access security offering. The update meets customer and partner demand for advanced security features
Read about the expanded SDN platform.
Most of those surveyed were in concurrence on SaaS.
Seventy-three percent said they have adopted as-a-service solutions. More than three in four (76%) use flexible consumption models.
Most said they think as-a-service (aaS) helps not only deliver a better experience for the end user, but for IT teams. That’s because it helps their businesses with operational consistency.
Most also support the move to as-a-service because it leads to better business outcomes. Furthermore, these same IT professionals want aaS because these solutions simplify processes and cut down on risk.
As technology becomes more pervasive and complicated, you better hang on to your skilled people.
A whopping 85% of CIOs and ITDMs surveyed believe the ability to attract and retain talent will be critical as the world becomes increasingly more digital. Almost half (49%) of respondents are in the process of getting their IT teams more skills. Another 46% are investing in new talent areas over the course of the next year.
Most CIOs and ITDMs (90%) say they plan to tackle internal initiatives in 2021. Those include sustainability (50%), employee mental health (50%), privacy (47%), and diversity and inclusion (47%).
Societal issues are important to them as well. Eighty-five percent say they will tackle these this year, including the digital divide (39%); health care (37%); climate change (35%); social justice (34%); human rights (33%); misinformation or “fake news” (31%); poverty, hunger and homelessness (28%).
Liz Centoni is Cisco’s chief strategy officer and general manager for applications.
“IT leaders are at the forefront of ensuring critical success for their organizations in 2021,” she said. “Even as questions remain and new challenges will surface, CIOs and IT decision makers are telling us they need to accelerate digital agility for their teams, so they have the speed, flexibility and choice to consume services across both traditional and modern environments.”
Liz Centoni is Cisco’s chief strategy officer and general manager for applications.
“IT leaders are at the forefront of ensuring critical success for their organizations in 2021,” she said. “Even as questions remain and new challenges will surface, CIOs and IT decision makers are telling us they need to accelerate digital agility for their teams, so they have the speed, flexibility and choice to consume services across both traditional and modern environments.”
The past year has been difficult on everyone. But it’s no understatement that the work-from-home phenomenon has been a challenge like no other for IT professionals.
Cisco recently revealed its “Accelerating Digital Agility” report, which polled both chief information officers and other IT decision makers (ITDMs). The research found a few keys to IT success, which include delivering the best end-user experience; focusing on security and collaboration for a hybrid workforce; using technology to invest in employees and to tackle societal issues; and driving innovation and security in a cloud-first world.
It turns out these ITDMs are putting their money where their mouths are. According to the survey, which queried 23,000 IT professionals around the world, more than one-half (56%) are investing in cloud applications. That same number are pouring money into network security, and 51% are spending more on cloud security. Furthermore, nearly half (45%) are breaking out the checkbooks for multicloud infrastructure this year and next.
IT leaders that Cisco surveyed are, for the most part, focused on setting up their organizations for success in 2021 and beyond. They have evolved their priorities and strategies to focus on the core issues mentioned above.
Our slideshow above dives into the specifics how these IT professionals are getting that done.
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