As enterprises navigate deeper into the digital economy, their underlying digital infrastructure continues to evolve in tune with customer demands. As every business attempts to operate like a tech company, the role of CIOs has matured from their initial days. They have transitioned from being the caretaker of technology initiatives into a leader of driving innovation at scale, and strategic business growth. Their primary objective is to strengthen the business’s digital core and help it adapt and accommodate market trends, customer experience demands, and sustainability.

With 95% of all new digital workloads expected to be deployed on the cloud according to Gartner, one of the biggest priorities for CIOs today will undoubtedly be nowhere else. They will strive to tackle challenges and ensure easier adoption of the cloud as the de-facto digital ecosystem for every mission-critical business operation. As with the benefits, the challenges of leveraging the cloud for digital experiences have also evolved from their initial days. CIOs worldwide are in the race to find sustainable solutions that will alleviate their worries about moving to a cloud-first digital transformation approach.

The top 4 cloud challenges CIOs face today

Let us have a closer look at the top 4 challenges CIOs encounter with their enterprise cloud initiatives today:

Accommodating a data and analytics strategy

One of the core pillars of building a digital-first business is to transition into a highly data-driven entity. Every decision made in the business must be backed by deep-rooted data analytics-driven insights. Studies show that 79% of businesses that invest in data analytics witness improvements in their profit. There is no stopping enterprises from expanding the scope of use cases that will be governed by insights generated through data analytics. However, from a CIO’s perspective, the use of data analytics at scale would pose significant challenges for their cloud aspirations if not strategically dealt with from the very beginning.

The use of the cloud for handling all technology and data stores would entail massive computational requirements for the cloud vendor chosen by the business. CIOs must evaluate the compatibility, budgets, technical feasibility, and other vital parameters for their cloud providers when large-scale initiatives like data and analytics are handled via the cloud. This holds for both building native data analytics solutions to be hosted on the cloud, or when leveraging a SaaS data analytics product.

Security

We are seeing a barrage of investments being made by enterprises worldwide into new and emerging technologies like Generative AI, blockchain, quantum computing, etc. These innovations are being deployed on both on-premises and public cloud infrastructure that organizations leverage. However, according to studies, nearly 40% of business leaders do not understand the cyber risks that these new technologies pose for their businesses. The race to adopt new tech will not be subdued by them for fear of losing out to competitors in the innovation race.

However, CIOs cannot afford to ignore the risks posed on the organization’s cloud ecosystem due to this innovation rat race. From preventing misconfigurations and insecure interfaces, to ensuring continuous monitoring of end-to-end cloud assets, they have a lot on their plate.

Solving the edge puzzle

Cloud computing has matured since inception and new forms of localized microenvironments are created on cloud ecosystems by businesses today. One of the most prominent and mainstream versions among them would be edge computing. Building cloud assets closer to the user base helps organizations offer digital experiences with lower latency and opens several possibilities for the business side. From large-scale automation to the use of IoT, AR/VR technology, etc. in customer use cases, the benefits of edge computing are too good to be ignored.

However, taking the cloud heart of the business to a different location also entails more challenges. In addition to failure mitigation, CIOs must also ensure that this extended arm of their cloud infrastructure is audited for security, guaranteed for performance, and assured of resilience. Ensuring that any failure in the network doesn’t disrupt the overall digital experience of the business is critical as customers will not like being interrupted due to technical delays.

Application development expertise

The cloud-first boom for digital experiences will be realized only if the business can build and roll out cloud-friendly applications for both their customers as well as for their operations. However, an accelerated push for application development will need a more strategic and fail-proof approach.

CIOs must pitch in their expertise to ensure that new application development roadmaps encompass core elements of scalability, security, performance, and resilience as integral constituents. The speed of development required also entails the use of approaches like no-code or low-code development which again creates the need for more strategic oversight.

Winning on the cloud

It is unfair to say that the future of digital will be cloud-based because we are already in a cloud-first ecosystem as far as enterprise technology is concerned. However, CIOs do have their hands full with priorities to strengthen, streamline, and safeguard their organization’s critical cloud assets. Building a sustainable roadmap for cloud-driven business growth requires more than just internal expertise. This is where a reputed technology partner like Recode can be your biggest asset. Get in touch with us to know more.