Welcome to the 2016 CIO and IT Leadership survey, delivered in partnership by Coeus Consulting and PSD Group.  We undertook this survey in order to illustrate the ‘lay of the land’ regarding current and emerging technologies and current IT spend and budgets.  In particular we were keen to explore the impact of Digital on the IT operating model. We also wanted to provide you with the latest employment trends and a view of the effect that technology is having on the availability of skills.

Here are some emerging themes from the report:

• Digital is here and is creating to need for 2-Speed IT

Digital is here and is driving the need for agile and innovative IT initiatives to move forward quickly without being hampered by the checks and balances needed to maintain business-critical IT operations.  Embedding a 2 Speed IT operating model as a response to the above challenges ensures that both the enterprise systems at the core of all organisations are sustained and nourished, whilst simultaneously being able to develop and deploy new solutions rapidly

• IT is better represented at Executive Board level

Our respondents highlighted that 68% of Technology leaders now report directly to the CEO and 71% are a member of the Executive Team.  A clear recognition that IT is driving growth and sales through Digital, as well as the increasing remit of the CIO

• IT budgets are on the increase

A significant percentage of IT budgets are on the rise, 40% reported an increase in their annual budget and 34% reported that it had stayed the same.  This has a direct correlation to the sole ownership of the IT budget.  IT is more in control than ever of its own destiny and the allocation of spend to transformation and innovation activities shows the foresight and planning to keep costs down.

• Organisations will be chasing resources

Regardless of the specific technology, there already is and will continue to be a higher demand, than supply, for key resources. Most organisations are indicating that they want to recruit permanently, however this still begs the question as to where these permanent hires will come from, the market simply doesn't have these skills in abundance.  Whilst companies contemplate the idea of building these skills in-house, interims and contractors will surely benefit.