Cloud, code, and the top challenges facing CIOs in 2024

With the growth of cloud computing and the emergence of artificial intelligence, technology is more important to business outcomes than ever before. What are the most critical issues CIOs should focus on?

Translated from Clouds, Codes, and Navigating Top CIO Challenges in 2024, author Fernando Castanheira.

Driven by the emergence of artificial intelligence, the growth of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud infrastructure, and the shift to hybrid work environments, the role of technology in business is growing at lightning speed. More than ever, every company’s ability to create value and achieve growth is dependent on how it uses and manages technology.

In a global survey of IT and business decision makers by Riverbed, 92% of respondents said IT departments are more responsible for business innovation than they were three years ago. This puts increasing pressure on CIOs to keep operations running while driving business value.

The possibilities and risks of artificial intelligence

Although AI is still in its infancy, it’s already proving its value to organizations. A GitHub survey found that 92% of developers are using AI coding tools, with 70% reporting improved code quality, faster completion times, and faster incident resolution.

But AI can hallucinate, and AI models learn to code by using existing code, which is sometimes flawed. When using AI to create code, CIOs should ensure that human developers trained in secure coding review AI-generated code before it goes into production. This is true for any use of AI, but it’s especially true for reviewing code used to hunt for cybersecurity threats.

Other proven AI applications include monitoring critical applications to identify performance issues and other problems. Observability solutions use analytics, correlation, and automated runbooks to provide insights and allow IT to troubleshoot, identify, and resolve issues, often without human intervention. However, to operate without human intervention, AI models must be trained using a larger family of autonomous solutions that start small and build from small tasks.

Training and upskilling employees is essential to realizing the benefits of AI. Organizations must provide agile AI training programs to help employees solve real-world problems. As the IT staff shortage crisis persists, companies may have to shoulder more of the burden of AI training guidance than for other technologies.

Strengthening security and perfecting zero trust

An increasingly important component of network security is adopting a zero-trust strategy, which assumes that any user or device on the network is suspect and requires continuous authorization and authentication. However, by implementing continuous verification and least privilege policies, organizations lose visibility into the applications they are trying to protect. The data tunnels required when using secure access service edge (SASE), which is very common in cloud architectures, prevent IT and security teams from understanding what is happening. As a result, they cannot identify performance issues or what is causing the problem.

Observability helps eliminate the black box effect created by remote work, public cloud, and encrypted architectures such as zero trust environments by identifying which users experienced issues, the severity of the issue, how users accessed the application, and the specific failure area (ISP, VPN, or specific gateway).

The power of digital employee experience

Digital employee experience (DEX) is increasingly important for attracting and retaining talent, helping to address the skills shortage many companies face.

In a Riverbed survey, 95% of business and IT decision makers said it was very important (56% said it was critical) to provide a seamless digital employee experience, especially for younger generations who increasingly make up the majority of the workforce. 68% of leaders said they believe younger employees will leave their company if the digital experience is not up to par, and 63% said a poor digital employee experience would impact a company’s productivity, reputation, and performance.

Understanding the health of the network is critical to the digital employee experience, and high-performing companies combine observability with surveys to create a feedback loop to understand how employees experience the network.

Sustainable Technology

In recent years, sustainability has gone from being a nice-to-have idea to a priority for many organizations. Sustainability is not only good for the environment, but also for a company’s bottom line. A McKinsey study found that products that follow environmental, social, and governance (ESG) guidelines are growing faster than other products.

As international partners pursue net-zero emissions goals, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is becoming increasingly stringent. At the same time, new ESG regulations have been introduced. At the same time, companies are facing greater pressure from customers and other companies that emphasize environmental protection.

Organizations must proactively manage sustainability. With the ongoing shift to digital processes, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence, users are consuming more energy. They are also beginning to monitor power consumption at the device level. Correlating this type of data can provide actionable insights into reducing power consumption, such as identifying unused devices that are still running and even sending proactive messages to users on how to reduce power consumption.

Obstacles Facing Today's CIOs

The challenge facing CIOs is how to make technology a business driver when uncontrollable factors such as IT staff pressure and technical debt are hindering it.

In a Riverbed survey, 37% of IT and business decision makers said they face an IT staff shortage, and 41% said their existing IT staff lacks key skills. As CIOs face skilled staff shortages and skills mismatches, IT systems are becoming incredibly complex. Add to that the pressure to deploy artificial intelligence and protect networks from cyberattacks, and you’d think job satisfaction would decline. But that’s not the case.

Being a CIO is exciting, but also challenging. New technologies are changing everything. The only key is knowing what matters most.