CIO challenges are complex and abundant. Businesses need to extract timely insights from a growing diversity of content, transactions, and feeds; Enterprises need to rethink how data is captured, preserved, accessed and transformed; and CIOs need to shift not only technology but also their leadership role and IT culture.
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2018 will see even more digital acceleration and differentiation. With a growing landscape of technologies and solutions at their disposal, such as mobile, cloud, IoT, AI, object storage and NVMe™, the opportunities are just as great as the challenges. Here are the top four CIO challenges for this year:
1. Data Security will remain a top priority for all CIOs
Businesses are attacked by ransomware every 40 seconds[1]. Targeted attacks are custom-designed to penetrate standard defenses. Deploying proactive threat detection and integrating preventive, automated solutions for ransomware and insider threat will be a top priority for CIOs of any sized organization.
Furthermore, as cloud initiatives gain momentum, increased data governance is a must, and the monitoring of data throughout its lifecycle (not just at the perimeter of your network) will be a critical element of data security strategy.
2. Digitalization of business processes still remains a challenge for large companies.
The only constant in today’s businesses is change. And that change is accelerating. Some companies were born into the digital age, but for large enterprises, digital transformation is a gradual adjustment of IT tools and culture. Building the “digital enterprise” requires consolidation, provisioning and orchestration of various applications. To enable a more mobile and connected workforce, CIOs will need to hone in on cost-benefit analysis and justification for tools, frameworks, and applications.
3. Cloud Adoption continues to be a challenge and a priority.
Brokering, governance, security, IoE – the cloud continues to be an asset, a challenge and a priority.
Here are the key CIO challenges and cloud priorities for this year:
- Identifying service and deployment models for as-a-service offerings
- Multi-cloud strategy to avoid lock-in and control costs
- Managing data ownership and costs associated with data mobility
- Hybrid cloud management and how to do it effectively without spiraling costs.
4. Data analytics present an opportunity and a threat
The value of data grows when you can monetize it either directly or through the insights gleaned from the data. New business opportunities exist in data, yet CIOs are still struggling to have an effective data strategy: what data to keep; how to mine the data; what infrastructure is optimal for Big Data vs. Fast Data?
While near real-time analytics gain more importance for faster decision making, decisions relating to applications and infrastructure remain slow and complex.
Set Your Business Up For Success
Amid all of CIO challenges it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees, so take a step back to see the bigger strategy. The world is becoming data-centric and getting to insight should be the primary focus of businesses. CIOs should be defining data architectures instead of infrastructure architectures, and creating data strategies instead of storage strategies.
Western Digital is leading the charge to help businesses transform themselves. From pioneering advancements in HDDs and SSDs, all the way to platforms, fully featured object and unified flash storage systems, Western Digital is able to innovate up and down the stack like no one else. Let us help you build on the transformative value of data.
Here are five suggested reads to support your transformation journey this year:
- The Deep Dive on NVMe – what is it and why is it important for your business.
- Storage Q&A Webinar – Facts, Myths, and Answers to All of Your NVMe Questions.
- Moving From Tape To Cloud? Here are 5 things you need to do first.
- Solving Unstructured Data Challenges with Object Storage – learn why object storage is emerging as a platform of choice for long-term data management.
- 2018 Data Trends – A 360 degree view on data and the big changes in 2018.
[1]https://securelist.com/kaspersky-security-bulletin-2016-story-of-the-year/76757/
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