Top CIO and CTO Trends to Watch in 2022
Do you love data? Us too! In fact, we love data so much that we decided to collect some of our own! Our latest survey covers topics like what today’s CTOs and CIOs are worried about, where they are spending their money, and how they’re freeing up more time to focus on core business value. It’s a virtual smorgasbord of data-driven cloud nuggets (nearly as good as the chicken kind, we assure you).
Want some highlights? Okaaay – because it’s you.
Cloud budget is flying high
In 2021, cloud services accounted for 29% of the technology budget as a whole, but in 2022 – our executives expect a jump to 47%. This is a 62% increase in just one year! With remote working the norm, and a push for more secure, available applications, cloud is becoming the most significant spend in IT. If you’ve ever been tasked with getting a round in from the bar close to pay-day, you can imagine the kind of pressure there is on using this budget wisely.
Cloud management challenges aren’t what you might think
Many people think of the cloud as inherently cost-effective, but actually, four out of ten of the top cloud challenges are related directly to managing the purse strings. (We cleverly marked them in orange below to make them easy to spot. You’re welcome.)
When we drilled down into what makes cloud spend such a tricky little mouse, we found that 58% of respondents have trouble finding the right offering to match the workload, 46% can’t get their engineers to optimize workloads and shut down the idle ones, and 46% also find allocating costs for their cloud needs a real headache. Predicting what they would need ahead of time came closely after, at 44%.
FinOps is growing
Gone are the days when nattering about FinOps had people wondering if you were planning a fishing expedition. Today, A FinOps strategy is a must-have, and 100% of our respondents have FinOps in place, or are working on it in the near future, very likely with a goal in mind of managing these cost-related challenges more tightly.
However, it’s still early days for FinOps, and only 29% say they have a mature and evolving strategy in place. As a result, it can be tough to see what the results of FinOps are when it’s working at its best.
Automation is here to stay
One thing we did see in the numbers is that the more mature an organization’s FinOps function is – the more they focus on automation. Automating manual tasks is far down on the priority list for the majority of companies, with only a quarter of our respondents calling it out as something they want to invest in for 2022. However, when you drill down into those who are making waves with FinOps – the numbers who are investing in automation are almost two-thirds of respondents or higher.
It’s clear that automation is a priority as part of a mature FinOps strategy, as many cost-optimization processes just can’t be achieved by engineers and DevOps teams alone. Prioritizing and forecasting cloud spend is one of those jobs that’s just easier and more accurate for machines; y’know – like sending emails. (Psst: Mike from accounting – your paper airplanes aren’t making it anywhere near the Marketing department, just give it up and sign up to Gmail, man.)
Your tech wish list for 2022
Interestingly, (not interesting like, Season 2 of Squid Game interesting, but y’know – cloud interesting) while automation isn’t a priority on the technology front, cloud optimization tools totally are. 63% of businesses can see the writing on the wall – and know that they need to solve the challenge of sprawling cloud costs in 2022.
As FinOps becomes more mature, we’re anticipating a convergence in technologies, where businesses can use automation and AI to create cloud optimization tools that work to help DevOps to do their jobs with less friction. Hey, wait a gosh-darn minute – we’ve totally done that at Zesty! Who could have seen that arc coming?
The full lowdown on all of the stats we’ve discussed here, plus loads more great data-driven insights to jazz up your next slide deck can be found in our recent survey, Scaling for Success, What’s Driving Technology Executives? Download it here, you know you want to.
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