Technical Debt: Will 2023 Be the Year We Tame It?
- By CDOTrends editors
- March 27, 2023
Businesses increasingly rely on technology to drive growth and competitiveness, making the role of the CIO crucial in ensuring a company's IT infrastructure supports its strategic objectives. In 2023, CIOs face a challenging landscape as they balance pressure to modernize legacy systems and do more with less amidst budget constraints.
SoftwareOne Holding AG surveyed 600 C-suite and IT decision-makers in the U.K. and U.S., revealing that 83% of CIOs feel pressure to stretch their budgets further, despite expecting an increase in IT budgets. Technical debt, the accumulation of suboptimal technical solutions over time, is a significant challenge, with 72% of CIOs admitting this has set them back in digital transformation initiatives.
The accumulation of technical debt was primarily due to rushed cloud migrations during the pandemic. 38% of respondents said this was the primary reason, with 31% admitting they failed to optimize their workloads before commencing the migration process. Moreover, 38% revealed that their company miscalculated the cloud budget when provisioning, resulting in significant cloud overspending.
“Businesses are dealing with an uncertain economic environment, which makes planning big IT transformations a challenge. Yet organizations need to move to the cloud and modernize legacy applications to remain competitive. We’re seeing a real need for a combination of innovation with optimization. Our clients are looking for pragmatic step-by-step transformation initiatives rather than wholesale mega projects that can be hard to get approved when budgets are under pressure,” said Craig Thomson, senior vice president for cloud and application services at SoftwareOne.
Many companies still have multiple on-premises IT legacy systems, and 51% of CIOs state that the complexity of legacy IT is one of the top three challenges they currently face. This complexity leads to a slower pace of digital transformation and a higher level of technical debt.
The survey also found that 45% of CIOs surveyed believe improved transparency and control of cloud costs would help them extract greater value from their cloud investments and improve company buy-in. 80% plan to increase their investment in FinOps to achieve this, and 39% say they will use cloud-native tools to reduce licensing costs.
Despite budget pressures, 82% will increase their investment in application modernization. Security remains a priority, with 92% of respondents increasing investment in this space. Once legacy IT is migrated and modernized, and the cloud is optimized, any savings can be reinvested into innovative projects that help the IT team achieve more with less.
Image credit: iStockphoto/gkuchera