Trends vs Technologies, a research report from Capita Technology Solutions in partnership with Cisco which is published in full today, includes a survey of IT professionals across multiple industries within the commercial sector. It reveals a strong disconnect between nine* key trends and the ability of businesses to implement the technology to realise those trends.
Among the key findings is a disconnect between the apparent relevance of a trend compared with the number of decision makers who say their industry has the skills to implement it.
For example, while 70 per cent of IT decision makers said the Internet of Things (IoT) was relevant to their business, almost three quarters (71 per cent) said they did not have the skills to identify the opportunities for growth offered by IoT, while 80 per cent they did not have the skills to capitalise on the data received from IoT. Just 30 per cent said it was being implemented.
Similarly, nine in 10 businesses (90 per cent) said big data was relevant to their business, but it was being implemented in fewer than four in 10 businesses (39 per cent) and 64 per cent did not have the skills to recognise how they could use big data within their business.
The report identified several key barriers to implementation of IoT, the most prevalent being the perceived risk of security breaches, issues surrounding data governance and overcoming problems created by adapting legacy IT systems.
Legacy IT infrastructure was the top barrier to the implementation of big data, along with data governance issues and cost.