Don’t forget the other stuff - IT Essentials

AI is amazing, but ransomware and resilience haven’t gone anywhere

Despite the rate of change in the tech industry, there is one perennial challenge that is never, ever unseated from among IT leaders’ top concerns: cost, RoI, moolah, cashmoney and the almighty dollar.

Even in the midst of AI-fuelled disruption and cyberattacks, only one percentage point separates concerns about AI (38%) from costs (37%) in our annual spending intent research, which our research director John Leonard presented to delegates at our IT Leaders Summit last week.

Security also appeared in the top three, which is unsurprising considering these three topics have cropped up in nearly every conversation we’ve had and event we’ve attended this year.

A perfect example was Gartner’s Security and Risk Management Summit this week, which is not only explicitly about one of those areas but featured the other two heavily. And I do mean heavily: almost half of the first day’s >110 sessions included a reference to AI in the title, let alone those that simply mentioned it in the content.

Both John and Gartner’s analysts cautioned about over-focusing on any one of those areas. John asked, “Does it make sense to shuffle more funding towards AI to the possible neglect of other less visible but equally important areas?” while Gartner’s Josh Murphy said, “The more we chase AI for the sake of AI, the more we are going to be starving the organisation of the controls that can keep it safe.”

Remember, AI isn’t adding anything new or novel, it’s just letting us do more of what we have always done, faster (albeit, much faster). The other stuff – ransomware, digital transformation, infrastructure resilience and everything else that keeps IT busy day-to-day – hasn't gone anywhere.

The good news for leaders, according to our research, is that UK IT budgets are holding up, and even increasing in real terms. The bad news is that the demands are increasing even faster.

Watch for more research coverage over the coming weeks, including comparisons of our UK findings against those of our North American sister site MES Computing.

Recommended Reads

Among the explicitly non-AI sessions at Gartner’s summit was one dealing with the next big thing (yes, already): quantum computing. Read our coverage to find out how you should prepare without becoming paralysed, and watch for more on Computing very soon.

In case you missed the link above, click here to read the first part of our spending intent research. We dig into how IT leaders are spending now and their approaches to topics like cloud costs, sovereignty and (of course) AI.

Speaking of AI, I talked to Will Lucas, head of technology projects at Oscar-winning VFX studio Double Negative, about how the company is using AI and virtualisation to make cinema a truly global experience.

And because cost is never far from artificial intelligence, this week’s episode of Ctrl Alt Lead – with Greg Holmes, field CTO at Apptio, an IBM company – is all about how the technology is forcing IT to rethink its financial playbook.

Finally, we continue our coverage of the IT Leaders Summit with sessions on the rise of the hybrid leader (essential reading for anyone seeking to move into leadership today, or expand their title from three letters to four), the new data governance challenges that AI brings, and building AI with intent.