Top Investment Areas for CIOs in 2018

There’s no time to rest when you’re in charge of keeping your company ahead of the curve. This is the responsibility of CIOs across the country and world. Constantly striving to adopt not only the newest, but most useful, new technologies is a major part of the job. But it can be tricky to know what types of tech paradigm are shifting, and which ones are going to be here today and gone tomorrow. A diligent CIO will keep ahead of these trends and be able to make thought-out decisions based on evidence.

Here are a few of the top investment areas for CIOs in 2018. 

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is often overlooked; but it’s one of the most crucial aspects of any business in the modern age. There’s no room for error on this front. Yet, there are constantly stories of major businesses allowing egregious data breaches on their watches. The Equifax data leak of 2017 is still fresh in the minds of about 143 million consumers who had their data stolen by hackers.

The main issue with cybersecurity is that you can never be totally confident in your system or methods. Threats are constantly evolving in this sphere (a veritable digital arms race), which means your approach needs to as well. You will be most vulnerable to attacks that are new to the world. This means your business needs to take a proactive approach to security. It’s estimated that cybercrime will cost about $6 trillion on a global level by 2021. Investing in cybersecurity will help you mitigate your role in paying a part of that. 

Internal Organizational Tools

Your business won’t run smoothly if employees aren’t all on the same page. In the past, this has been exceedingly difficult for larger companies—especially before the proliferation of the Internet. Recent innovations in software as a service (SaaS) have made this much more approachable. There are a few areas that can be strongly improved by implementing internal organizational tools.

Communication is one of the most crucial layers of a company. People need to be able to get in contact with each other quickly and easily. Plus, they need to have an accessible record of the conversation. Email is okay but isn’t optimal for all applications. CIOs should seriously consider the benefits of a dedicated communication software for the entire company. Workflow optimization is another way software can be implemented on this front. There are several major services out there that allow companies to delegate responsibilities to employees through easy-to-use software. When your company is transparent and organized, it will always run better. 

Data Analytics

It’s impossible to escape the oncoming wave of data. It’s everywhere; and it all means something. The first step for businesses is finding a way to capture as much of this data as possible. Once that has been accomplished, it’s essential to use it to improve operations. Traditional BI and analytics tools are on the way out. The future will be based around analytics tools that leverage artificial intelligence architecture. This allows enterprises to do more, faster than has ever previously been possible. Insights that normally would have taken weeks will be available in a matter of hours with next-generation analytics technology such as relational search. The future of this industry will likely follow the footsteps of companies like ThoughtSpot which enable employees to explore the data without relying on data scientists.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the biggest revolutions to the technology world in recent years. Instead of all data being locally based—it can now be accessed anywhere with a connection to the Internet thanks to the cloud. There are several ways this can be extremely useful to businesses. It can reduce overall costs—as hardware and energy consumption are outsourced to the cloud provider.

It also allows employees to seamlessly collaborate on projects. In the past, people would have needed to constantly send work back and forth if they were working in separate locations. With cloud computing, everyone can access and manipulate the same files from distant places. 

These are a few of the top areas for concern for all CIOs in the near future. There are of course many areas that need to be addressed in this constantly changing technological landscape. It’s essential to always be looking forward or run the risk of your company falling behind. 

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