Even with bigger budgets, CIOs need to do less

CIOs’ budgets may have increased, but at the same time this has not given them more leverage. This can be read in a recent report by software supplier SoftwareOne.

For their study, researchers surveyed more than six hundred IT executives from the United Kingdom and the United States. 93% of CIOs budget more, but 83% expect they can accomplish more with fewer resources.

Among those CIOs considering additional money for IT matters, 76% expect a budget increase of 1% to 49%. 17% of CIOs expect their budgets to grow by at least 50%.

For 90% of executives, an increase in the IT budget is associated with an increase in spending on cloud services. A portion of the additional IT budget goes towards this.

Digital transformation also contributes to higher costs for cloud services. Due to this development, many companies are increasingly using the possibilities of cloud technology. And of course there are additional costs.

“Companies are affected by global economic developments,” says Daniel Perrier of SoftwareOne. “This makes it more difficult to plan for major IT transitions. However, companies must move to the cloud and modernize their legacy applications to stay competitive.

The study also shows that 72% of CIOs are holding back their digital transformation efforts due to the additional cost of cloud services. That’s worrying: 92% of companies expect CIOs to take care of digital transformation, according to Perrier.

“We’re seeing a strong need for a combination of innovation and optimization. Customers are asking for incremental change rather than large-scale migration projects that are slow to approve when budgets are under pressure. This is reflected in the research results.”

For example, less than 95% of CIOs want more insight into cloud-related costs. The rationale: As a CIO, it obviously helps if one can numerically show that it is absolutely necessary to generate enough support among other directors for an additional IT budget.

Cloud financial management practices (FinOps) can help here, says Dan Ortman of SoftwareOne. “The use of FinOps technology can help organizations streamline their cloud-related costs.”

Additionally, FinOps technology improves cloud-related processes and makes them more transparent. That way, companies can get more value from their investments in the cloud, Ortman said.

“After migrating legacy IT solutions and modernizing cloud environments, all cost savings can be reinvested in innovative projects. This helps the IT department do less.