In 2022, IT spending in India is forecast to total $101.8 billion, an increase of 7 per cent from 2021. Around 64 per cent of survey respondents from India will spend additional budget on cyber and information security projects (64 per cent of survey respondents) and 56 per cent will decrease their spending on legacy infrastructure and data centre technologies (56 per cent of survey respondents).
Cyber and information security is at the top of the list of technology areas for increased spending in 2022, with 66 per cent of all respondents expecting to increase associated investments in the next year. This is followed by business intelligence/data analytics (51 per cent) and cloud platforms (48 per cent).
Among respondents from India, 64 per cent of CIOs have cyber and information security as an area for increasing spending, followed by business intelligence/data analytics (56 per cent) and digital business transformation initiatives (51 per cent).
“There is a continued need to invest in cybersecurity as the environment becomes more challenging. A high level of ‘composability’ would help an enterprise recover faster and potentially even minimize the effects of a cybersecurity incident,” Monika Sinha, research vice president at Gartner.
Investments in AI, cloud and security to support business ‘composability’
Enterprises must embrace business ‘composability’ to thrive through disruption in 2022 and beyond, according to Gartner, Inc.’s annual global survey of CIOs and technology executives.
The 2022 CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 2,387 CIO and technology executive respondents in 85 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $9 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $198 billion in IT spending. The survey separated CIO respondents’ enterprises into levels of business ‘composability’ (“low,” “moderate,” and “high”) depending on the extent to which they utilise the three domains of ‘composable’ business.
“Business ‘composability’ is an antidote to volatility. Sixty-three percent of survey respondents at organisations with high ‘composability’ reported superior business performance compared with peers or competitors in the past year. They are better able to pursue new value streams through technology, too,” said Sinha
Artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed cloud are the two main technologies that a majority of high-‘composability’ enterprises have already deployed or plan on deploying in 2022. These technologies are a catalyst for business ‘composability’ because they enable modular technology capabilities, Gartner said.
On average, high-‘composability’ enterprises expect greater increases in revenue and IT budget in 2022 than their moderate-or low-‘composability’ peers. In 2022, CIOs and technology executives at high-‘composability’ enterprises expect their revenue and IT budgets to grow, on average, by 7.7 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively, while low-‘composability’ enterprises only expect both to increase by 3.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively.
“Most high-‘composability’ enterprises set up strategic planning and budgeting as a continuous and iterative activity to adjust to change more easily. Without big deficits to remedy elsewhere, CIOs can afford to invest in ‘composability’, especially for IT developers and business architects who can design in a ‘composable’ manner,” Sinha added.
Domains of Business Composability
With volatility serving as a business driver for the foreseeable future, CIOs are in a unique position to advance the three domains of business ‘composability’: ‘composable’ thinking, ‘composable’ business architecture and ‘composable’ technology, Gartner explained.
Composable Thinking
“Business ‘composability’ isn’t uniformly high across the economy because it requires business thinking to be reinvented,” said Sinha. “Traditional business thinking views change as a risk, while ‘composable’ thinking is the means to master the risk of accelerating change and to create new business value.”
CIOs leading high-‘composability’ enterprises recognise that business conditions often change, from customer demands to financial models, and empower the teams that are closest to the action to respond and re-form to those new conditions. For instance, over half of high-‘composability’ respondents said they promote a high-trust culture that encourages employees to independently make decisions double the percentage of moderate- and six-times more than low-‘composability’ enterprises.
Composable Business Architecture
Industrial-era businesses were designed for stability and slow, predictable change. In the digital era, business architectures need to be designed for uncertainty and continuous change. Instead of optimising for efficiency, the ‘composable’ enterprise optimises for adaptability. Systems, processes and workers no longer serve one predetermined use case or purpose.
“Digital business initiatives fail when business leaders commission projects from the IT organization and then shirk accountability for the implementation results, treating it as just another IT project. Instead, high-‘composability’ enterprises embrace distributed accountability for digital outcomes, reflecting a shift that most CIOs have been trying to make for several years, as well as create multidisciplinary teams that blend business and IT units to drive business results.” said Sinha
Composable Technology
“Business runs on technology, but technology itself must be ‘composable’ to run ‘composable’ businesses. ‘Composability’ needs to extend throughout the technology stack, from infrastructure that supports rapid integration of new systems and new partners to workplace technology that supports the exchange of ideas, Sinha explained.
The survey also revealed that CIOs and technology executives in high-‘composability’ enterprises have pushed forward more aggressively when it comes to iterative technology development, sharing data across systems and people, and building out integration capabilities data, analytics and applications.
“CIOs at moderate-or low-‘composability’ enterprises must internalise these three domains of business ‘composability’ to make their organisation nimbler and well equipped to handle the rapidly changing business environment in which they operate. It’s a gradual, but imperative, process going into 2022 and beyond,” said Sinha.
