Security, BI ‘critical’ for Australian CIOs in 2013: Telsyte

Security, business intelligence (BI), big data and developing staff skills have been deemed critical by many Australian CIOs for the financial year 2012-13 according to analyst firm Telsyte.

In a Top Priorities 2012-13 survey of more than 800 Australian CIOs and IT decision makers conducted in November 2011, security was cited as a top priority by 21 per cent of respondents. BI, including big data, and skills development were also seen as critical priorities by 11 and 10 per cent of CIOs surveyed, respectively.

In addition, 36 per cent of CIOs rated security as a very important priority while 34 per cent indicated skills development as important.

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In addition, the report found that the emerging trend of mobility now outranks ICT spending reduction with 9 per cent of CIOs viewing mobility as a critical IT business priority and 28 per cent rating it as very important.

ICT spending reduction was critical for only 8 per cent of the 800 CIOs surveyed while 23 per cent cited it as very important.

According to Telsyte senior analyst and CIO program lead, Rodney Gedda, IT leaders have often rated security, BI, skills and IT-business alignment high on their list of priorities.

“With mobility in the top five of critical priorities, CIOs are responding to demands from the business as well as a mobile-empowered workforce and this will only increase in 2013,” he said in a statement.

Gedda added that cloud computing is also now viewed as a higher priority than IT infrastructure upgrades and unified communications by the CIOs surveyed.

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