- 58% of respondents report either an increase or a plan to increase emerging technology investment in 2021, compared with 29% in 2020 despite talent challenges.
- To allow the smooth movement of information between physical and virtual locations, organisations are investing heavily in creating a strong hybrid cloud base, supported by multi-cloud technologies.
- In 2021, 64% of respondents reported that they have either increased or are planning to increase investments in security technologies, up from just 31% in 2020.
- Organisations feel more comfortable directly deploying new technologies to accelerate growth, rather than relying on an extended observation period to develop the business case.
The talent shortage is cited as the most significant adoption barrier to 64 per cent of emerging technologies this year when compared with just four per cent last year, an industry expert said.
Yinuo Geng, Research Vice-President at Gartner, said that the ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT talent scarcity, especially for sourcing skills that enable cloud and edge, automation and continuous delivery.
In a survey on six technology domains – compute infrastructure and platform services, network, security, digital workplace, IT automation and storage and database, lack of talent availability was cited far more often than other barriers this year, such as implementation cost (29 per cent) or security risk (7 per cent).
IT executives cited talent availability as the main adoption risk factor for the majority of IT automation technologies (75 per cent) and nearly half of digital workplace technologies (41 per cent).
Of all the IT automation technologies profiled in the survey, Geng said that only 20 per cent of them have moved ahead in the adoption cycle since 2020.
“The issue of talent is to blame here,” she said.
Adoption of emerging technologies
Despite talent challenges, she said that infrastructure and operations (I&O) and other IT leaders have increased the adoption of emerging technologies to drive innovation as organisations begin to recover from the pandemic.
Across all technology domains, 58 per cent of respondents reported either an increase or a plan to increase emerging technology investment in 2021, compared with 29 per cent in 2020.
Furthermore, I&O functions have witnessed a reduction in deployment timelines, with all technologies in deployment expected to reach adoption within the next six to 18 months.
“This indicates that organisations feel more comfortable directly deploying new technologies to accelerate growth, rather than relying on an extended observation period to develop the business case,” Geng said.
In addition, a greater number of leaders (both inside and outside of the IT function) are influencing technology investment decisions this year, driving the trend of “democratised delivery.”
In 2021, 82 per cent of IT leaders either agree or strongly agree that enterprise leaders outside of IT influence emerging technology adoption decisions across all technology domains evaluated.
Top priorities
According to the survey, resilience and improving critical IT infrastructure are top priorities among I&O and other IT leaders in 2021.
As a result, Geng said that they are prioritising cloud deployments and investments in security technologies.
To allow the smooth movement of information between physical and virtual locations, she said that organisations are investing heavily in creating a strong hybrid cloud base, supported by multi-cloud technologies.
Distributed cloud systems, cloud access security brokers (CASBs) and cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) are among those reaching the deployment phase in 2021, with respondents stating that resilience is the primary investment driver for 63 per cent of these cloud technologies.
From 2020 to 2021, the number of security technologies in deployment rose sharply — from 15 per cent to 84 per cent of evaluated technologies.
In 2021, 64 per cent of respondents reported that they have either increased or are planning to increase investments in security technologies, up from just 31 per cent in 2020.
“I&O leaders who do not revise their infrastructure security strategy will face challenges due to the continued rise in the ransomware attack surface for enterprises,” Geng said.