IDC FutureScape Worldwide CIO 2019 Predictions Study

This IDC study provides IDC’s top 10 predictions for the 2019 CIO Agenda. These predictions provide a strategic context that will enable CIOs to lead their organizations through a period of multiplied innovation and disruption over the next 5 years. They also lay out IDC’s vision for the 10 most important shifts that will happen in IT organizations over the next 60 months and will help senior IT executives in the formation of their strategic IT plans.

The 2019 predictions for the CIO agenda are:

1. By 2021, driven by LOB needs, 70% of CIOs will deliver “agile connectivity” via APIs and architectures that interconnect digital solutions from cloud vendors, system developers, start-ups, and others.
2. Compelled to curtail IT spending, improve enterprise IT agility, and accelerate innovation, 70% of CIOs will aggressively apply data and AI to IT operations, tools, and processes by 2021.
3. By 2022, 65% of enterprises will task CIOs to transform and modernize governance policies to seize the opportunities and confront new risks posed by AI, ML, and data privacy and ethics.
4. Through 2022, 75% of successful digital strategies will be built by a transformed IT organization, with modernized and rationalized infrastructure, applications, and data architectures.
5. By 2020, 80% of IT executive leadership will be compensated based on business KPIs and metrics that measure IT’s effectiveness in driving business performance and growth, not IT operational measures.
6. By 2020, 60% of CIOs will initiate a digital trust framework that goes beyond preventing cyberattacks and enables organizations to resiliently rebound from adverse situations, events, and effects.
7. By 2022, 75% of CIOs who do not shift their organizations to empowered IT product teams to enable digital innovation, disruption, and scale will fail in their roles.
8. Through 2022, the talent pool for emerging technologies will be inadequate to fill at least 30% of global demand and effective skills development and retention will become differentiating strategies.
9. By 2021, 65% of CIOs will expand agile/DevOps practices into the wider business to achieve the velocity necessary for innovation, execution, and change.
10. By 2023, 70% of CIOs who cannot manage the IT governance, strategy, and operations divides between LOB-dominated edge computing, operational technology, and IT will fail professionally.