As enterprises navigate the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy, their underlying digital infrastructure continues to evolve. Some of that is to keep it in tune with customer demands and the rest to enable greater competitive efficiency and effectiveness. As every business attempts to operate like a tech company, the role of CIOs has also matured considerably.
CIOs have transitioned from merely being caretakers of technology initiatives into being seen as leaders of driving innovation at scale with crucial input to give in all efforts to power strategic business growth. In that challenging task, their primary objective today is to strengthen the business’s digital core to help the enterprise adapt and accommodate market trends, customer experience demands, and sustainability goals.
With 95% of all new digital workloads expected to be deployed on the cloud according to Gartner, one of the biggest priorities for CIOs today will undoubtedly be this space. They will strive to tackle challenges and ensure easier adoption of the cloud as it becomes the de-facto digital ecosystem for every mission-critical business operation. As with the benefits, the challenges of leveraging the cloud for digital experiences have also evolved from their initial days.
Today, CIOs worldwide are in the race to find sustainable solutions that will alleviate their worries about moving to a cloud-first digital transformation.
The top 4 cloud challenges CIOs face today
Let us have a closer look at the top 4 challenges CIOs encounter with their enterprise cloud initiatives today:
Accommodating a powerful data and analytics strategy
One of the core pillars of building a digital-first business is the transition into a data-driven entity. Every decision made in the business today must be backed by deep-rooted data analytics-driven insights. Studies show that 79% of businesses that invest in data analytics witness improvements in their profit. And this volume is surging. In fact, there is no stopping enterprises from expanding the scope of use cases that are governed by insights generated through data analytics.
However, from a CIO’s perspective, the use of data analytics at scale would pose significant challenges for their cloud aspirations.
The use of the cloud for handling all technology and data stores would entail a robust understanding of the massive computational requirements required by the chosen cloud vendor. CIOs must evaluate the compatibility, budgets, technical feasibility, and other vital parameters for their cloud providers when large-scale initiatives like data and analytics are handled via the cloud. This holds for both building native data analytics solutions to be hosted on the cloud, or when leveraging a SaaS data analytics product.
Security
We are seeing a barrage of investments being made by enterprises worldwide into new and emerging technologies like Generative AI, blockchain, quantum computing, etc. These innovations are being deployed on both on-premises and public cloud infrastructure. However, according to studies, nearly 40% of business leaders do not understand the cyber risks that these new technologies pose for their businesses. In the race to adopt new tech, these concerns are likely to take center stage.
Clearly, CIOs cannot afford to ignore the risks posed to the organization’s cloud ecosystem as this innovation rat race fires up. From preventing misconfigurations and insecure interfaces, to ensuring continuous monitoring of end-to-end cloud assets, they have a lot on their plate when it comes to securing their cloud data ecosystem.
Solving the edge puzzle
Cloud computing has matured considerably. As technologies like IoT become more widely prevalent, new forms of localized microenvironments are constantly being created on cloud ecosystems by enterprises. Among the most prominent and mainstream versions of those is edge computing. Building these cloud-powered assets closer to the user base helps organizations offer digital experiences with lower latency and opens several possibilities for powerful business applications. From large-scale automation to the use of IoT, AR/VR technology, etc. in customer use cases, the benefits of edge computing are too many to be ignored.
However, extending the boundaries of the cloud heart of the business to a range of different locations also entails more challenges. In addition to failure mitigation, CIOs must also ensure that this extended arm of their cloud infrastructure is audited for security, guaranteed for performance, and assured of resilience. Ensuring that any failure in the network doesn’t disrupt the overall digital experience of the business is critical as customers will not like being interrupted due to technical delays.
Application development expertise
The cloud-first boom for digital experiences will be fully and capably realized only if the business can build and roll out cloud-friendly applications for both their customers as well as for their operations. This demands some work on the front end too. That’s where enterprise applications become crucial. However, an accelerated push for application development will demand a more strategic and fail-proof approach.
CIOs must pitch in their expertise to ensure that new application development roadmaps encompass core elements of scalability, security, performance, and resilience apart from elements like usability and integration. The speed of development required also entails the use of approaches like no-code or low-code development which again creates the need for more strategic oversight.
Winning on the cloud
It is no longer accurate to say that the future of digital will be cloud-based considering that we are already in a cloud-first ecosystem. However, CIOs do have their hands full with priorities to strengthen, streamline, and safeguard their organization’s critical cloud assets. Building a sustainable roadmap for cloud-driven business growth requires more than just internal expertise. This is where a reputed technology partner like Recode can be your biggest asset. Get in touch with us to know more.
