IDC: Top 10 predictions for CIOs in lead up to 2026

In the next few years, CIOs will experience mounting pressure to co-create new business models and outcomes through ecosystem-wide collaboration.

In addition, they will be responsible for tech-based empowerment, agility and resilience through collaborative governance, new service delivery models and a business outcomes orientation.

This is a key finding of IDC's latest IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2022 Predictions and the recent FutureScape webinar.

In the webinar, IDC spokespeople Joe Pucciarelli, Serge Findling and Pete Lindstrom focused on the "Future IT" and presented the key predictions that will impact CIOs and IT professionals worldwide over the next one to five years.

They highlighted that IT leaders are faced with responsibilities and opportunities that will not present themselves again in their lifetimes.

With the insights and guidance of IDC's global CIO Agenda team, the webinar focused on how to best manage and communicate IT investment priorities and implementation strategies as IT navigates the winds of change.

The predictions from the IDC FutureScape for CIO Agenda are:

Prediction 1: Through 2026, 65% of CIOs will sustain a cycle of tech-based empowerment, agility and resilience through collaborative governance, new service delivery models and a business outcomes orientation.

Prediction 2: By 2023, 60% of CIOs will be primarily measured for their ability to co-create new business models and outcomes through extensive enterprise and ecosystem-wide collaboration.

Prediction 3: By 2025, 75% of CIOs and CFOs will be forced to accelerate or enact formal technical debt management practices due to project delays or failures caused by unresolved technical debt.

Prediction 4: Given the rising imperative for hybrid and smart workplaces, by 2024, 60% of CIOs will reimagine user support and create centre of excellence (COE) based teams to guide the necessary investments in technology and process.

Prediction 5: By 2026, 85% of organisations whose data practices inhibit their business and operating strategies will empower CIOs to lead cross-enterprise investments in data governance, quality and compliance.

Prediction 6: By 2024, 40% of CIOs will fail to effectively evolve IT's capability to deliver modern digital infrastructures, provide ecosystem tech governance and support architecture-driven business outcomes.

Prediction 7: Driven by investor pressure to minimise SG-A expenses, by 2024, 40% of organisations will shift at least 25% of IT spending to direct cost aligned with specific line of business products/services.

Prediction 8: Despite the cost and friction, 60% of CIOs will embrace ecosystem-wide multi-factor authentication for its efficacy as an essential minimum to counter rising cybersecurity threats by 2022.

Prediction 9: By 2025, 60% of CIOs will collaborate to harness industry ecosystem capabilities as a critical source of innovation, data sharing, differentiation, and cybersecurity risk management.

Prediction 10: By 2023, businesses will require 55% of G2000 CIOs to implement sustainable IT, embedding environmental, social, and governance practices into the technology life cycle from acquisition to disposal.

IDC vice president of research IT Executive Programs Serge Findling says, "In the next five years, CIOs will be instrumental in helping their enterprise navigate the winds of change by enabling ecosystems, co-creating new business models and outcomes, empowering employees, and building resiliency.