IDC forecasts top 10 CIO agenda

FRAMINGHAM, USA: IDC 2014 Predictions: CIO Agenda session highlights the top 10 market predictions for the year ahead with an insight into long-term industry trends that may be on the horizon that will most impact the role of the CIO.

While the third platform of mobile, social, big data, and cloud services is just beginning to mature, it will require an entirely different set of IT skills and roles - many of which are yet to be invented.

According to Fred Magee, adjunct research advisor with IDC's Research Network, "We believe there are clear indicators that the existing role of technology management will evolve in a few short years to a set of roles that includes management of innovation, information intelligence, customer experience, and digital business presence. It's going to be an exciting decade."

The Top 10 CIO Agenda Predictions are:

1. In two years, over 70 percent of CIOs will change their primary role from directly managing IT to become an innovation partner.
2. Before 2017, only 40 percent of CIOs will rise to the challenge from CxOs to partner in strategic planning.
3. 70 percent of CIOs will increase enterprise exposure to risk.
4. Enterprise business mobility will require 60 percent of CIOs by 2017 to support an agile architecture.
5. The demographic shift to young and mobile customers will require 80 percent of CIOs in consumer-facing businesses to integrate IT with public social networks by 2015.
6. By 2015, third platform requirements will drive 60 percent of CIOs to use enterprise architecture (EA) as a required IT tool, but only 40 percent will deploy EA effectively.
7. By 2015, 60 percent of CIO security budgets for increasingly vulnerable legacy systems will be 30-40 percent too small to fund enterprise threat assessments.
8. By 2017, the transfer of 3rd Platform investments from IT to line-of-business budgets will require 60 percent of CIOs to reduce the cost of infrastructure and operations.
9. By 2016, 80 percent of the IT budget will be based on providing service integration.
10. By 2018, adoption of third platform IT technologies will redefine 90 percent of IT roles.