Three-quarters of Singapore CIOs said their organisations are well ahead of technology investments, citing digital transformation as an extremely important or important contributor to their companies’ worldwide strategy, a recent survey from NCS’ SURF Emerging Technologies Maturity Index 2014 revealed.
The study, which polled 240 senior information technology executives, indicated 50 percent of respondents expressed they are proactively assigning resources to emerging technology and investing in technology-led transformation initiatives over the next 24-36 months to drive business growth.
Areas in which CIOs intend to move their investments towards will be focused mainly on the Internet of Things (50.4 percent), followed by big data (42.5 percent), cloud (35.8 percent), and then more evenly social (35.4 percent), and mobility (35 percent)
So far, a majority (30 percent) have already invested in mobility, closely followed by cloud (29.2 percent), and social (25.8 percent). Only 17.5 percent have invested in the Internet of Things so far.
However, in terms of having the right resources and structure for digital transformation initiatives, less than one in five businesses admitted they have initiatives and resources in co-ordination, and less than one in 10 have established structured innovation groups.
At the same time, 20.8 percent of CIOs said they were still unsure about investing in big data, and 16.3 percent said they were unsure about investing in the Internet of Things.
Price (23 percent) and complexity (27 percent) are also mentioned as the main hindrances for slow adoption in the study.
“CIOs need to work closely with business stakeholders to increase work space productivity and collaboration. They should take advantage of real time intelligence to enhance service delivery and operational excellence,” said Lai Weng Yew, NCS vice president of business application services.
