24 Sep, 2020
Covid-19 forces one of the biggest surges in tech investment in history
This news may make the tech sector salivate, but the speed and scope of the upheaval will only replace one set of problems with another. That will create more headaches, especially for the Travel & Tourism sector.
LONDON, 22 September 2020, PRNewswire – Companies spent the equivalent of around US$15bn extra a week on technology to enable safe and secure home working during COVID-19, reveals the 2020 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey. This was one of the biggest surges in technology investment in history – with the world’s IT leaders spending more than their annual budget rise in just three months, as the global crisis hit, and lockdowns began to be enforced.
– Companies spent around US$15bn extra a week on technology during the pandemic’s first wave
– Security and privacy the top investment, but cyber attacks jump for 4 in 10 IT leaders
– Huge surge in IT spend isn’t sustainable – as 2020/21 technology budgets come under more strain
– 8 in 10 IT leaders concerned about the mental health of their tech teams due to the pandemic
The largest technology leadership survey in the world of over 4,200 IT leaders, analyzing responses from organizations with a combined technology spend of over US$250bn, also found that despite this huge surge of spending, and security & privacy being the top investment during COVID-19, 4 in 10 IT leaders report that their company has experienced more cyber attacks.
Other key findings from the world’s largest technology survey include:
– Digital companies pull away – Digital Leaders were more likely than non-digital leaders to make additional technology investments as a result of COVID-19 – with 50% more organizations that are ‘very’ or ‘extremely effective’ at using digital technologies spending an additional 21-50%. These investments focused on large-scale implementations of Distributed Cloud (42%) and SaaS (34%). The crisis has served to emphasize a growing divide between organizations driving their strategy through technology, and those that aren’t.
– Concerns over mental health – 8 in10 IT leaders during COVID-19 are concerned about the mental health of their team, which has resulted in 6 in 10 IT leaders (58%) putting programs in place to support their staff.
– Cloud investment up – After investment in security and privacy (47%), investment in infrastructure and the cloud was the third most important technology investment during COVID-19, with the number of IT leaders actively considering Distributed Cloud nearly doubling in just 12 months (from 11% to 21%).
– Skills shortages – Prior to COVID-19, 2020 skills shortages remained close to an all-time high. Subsequently, shortages in tech talent have remained high, only marginally dropping compared to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. In addition to cyber security skills (35%), the next three most scarce technology skills are organizational change management(27%), enterprise architecture (23%) and technical architecture and advanced analytics both at 22%.
Bev White, CEO of Harvey Nash Group said: “This unexpected and unplanned surge in technology investment has also been accompanied by massive changes in how organizations operate – with more organizational change in the last six months than we have seen in the last ten years. Success will largely be about how organizations deal with their culture and engage with their people.”
Steve Bates, Principal, KPMG in the US and global leader of KPMG International’s CIO Center of Excellence, said: “IT in the New Reality will be shaped by economic recovery patterns unique to each sector, location, and company. While every CIO is responding to these forces differently, one thing remains consistent; the urgency to act swiftly and decisively. Technology has never been more important to organizations’ ability to survive and thrive.“
Loading ...
Liked this article? Share it!