SaaS solutions gaining traction among CIOs amidst rapid digitisation: Study

The pandemic has catapulted digital transformation across industries and businesses and cloud has been a major enabler in the data driven business environment. The SaaS model is emerging as a hot favourite given its lower cost, scalability and sturdy security among others.

According to a study by Tokyo headquartered tech company, Rakuten, 77% of CIO’s say that they are increasingly embracing SaaS solutions to cater to specific functionalities. They believe that it will help them bring new capabilities to market more quickly (49%), scale more efficiently (29%), lowers costs (17%), while also reducing technology risk.

CIOs say that their budgets will increase. A large majority  ̶  70% expect their budgets to go up while 29% said they will remain constant. Only 1% of CIOs surveyed said that they expect their budgets to decrease.

Also the study states that 90% of CIOs agree that Covid-19 has reiterated technology’s strategic importance as a critical component of the business, and not just a source of cost efficiencies. Expectedly, they see their role in an organisation evolving to be that of a business leader (40%) or a Digital Transformation Leader (30%). These and more are findings of a survey by Rakuten India’s B2B Technology Initiative that has launched Rakuten SixthSense.

To meet the demands of business growth, CIO’s wish to invest in the following technology requirements. These emerged as their top five priority areas  ̶  38% cited investments in improving software development and QA lifecycle, 24% cited enterprise-wide observability solutions, 21% picked Data Management and availability, while 10% said it would be cloud and infrastructure, with the remaining citing DevOps and security to be their tech investment priority.

The management of data  ̶  its quality (44%), availability (18%), cost of management (18%) and tech and talent to drive data initiatives (20%) emerge to be pressing challenges faced by CIO’s surveyed, which also reflects in it being a key area of investment.

The survey confirms that CIOs clearly have their task cut out for them, while working around challenges of finding and retaining tech talent.

Recruiting and retaining tech talent is confirmed and cited by more one-third CIOs (36%) to be their most pressing challenge, followed by providing a digital experience (35%) and reducing the cost of operations (26%).

“Covid-19 has upended many trends and previous mindsets. While the importance of IT has only grown over the last two decades, the crisis has brought about a sea change in executive mindsets on the role of technology in business. This change is captured in our research with tech decision makers who are investing in technology for competitive advantage or refocusing their entire business around digital technologies,” Sunil Gopinath, CEO of Rakuten India.