Among the many headaches facing CIOs, IT complexity is inevitable in the era of digitalization and AI, but it must be mitigated to promote innovation. If, for example, a company has undergone some M&A, resulting in layered systems, it wouldn’t be much of an issue during a lull in technology acceleration, so disruption is limited. But those days are scarce now since technology is rapidly accelerating with an abundance of solutions on the market, especially with cloud. So while options, functionality, and business benefits have increased, so have the number of projects within companies.
“Over the past 20 years, the advent and pervasiveness of the cloud has completely reshaped the technology landscape for businesses,” says Daniele Massara, head of information systems at multi-utility Contarina. “Where previously we managed centralized IT environments, with proprietary infrastructures and in-house development teams, we’re now faced with a distributed, constantly evolving ecosystem of multi-cloud services, continuous updates, and new security threats. For medium-sized companies, this translates into more opportunities, but greater complexity and initiatives to manage.”
Barbara Martini, CIO of BFM Consulting, adds that this exponential increase in IT system complication can put the brakes on innovation if not managed strategically.
