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Successful CIOs, like all highly placed executives, must be adept at running an organization that’s good at getting work out the door.

Unfortunately, many of the most popular management techniques for fixing poor organizational performance don’t work. Or worse.

If you want better guidance, start with Peter Drucker’s observation that, “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”

Which should encourage you to take the next logical step: To improve IT’s performance, figure out which of your organization’s management practices are best at making getting work done difficult, and stop doing them. Here are some likely places to start.

Bad fix #1: Reorganize

What it is: The ever-popular Titanic iceberg collision remediation strategy of rearranging the deck chairs.

Why it’s a problem: Reorganizations don’t change how work gets done.

The usual rationale is that realigning reporting relationships removes barriers. Which it does, most often by replacing one set of barriers with a different set of barriers.

Meanwhile, reorganizations change the unwritten rules by which IT operates, as employees have to learn how to work with their new management.

Why it’s a temptation: It’s tempting because it’s easy. Just announce the new reporting relationships and leave it to everyone else to make it work.

It’s especially tempting when you have an ineffective manager — you can avoid the unpleasant conversation that tells them so, instead placing them someplace safe in the new organization to minimize the damage they inflict.

What to do instead: Just about anything.

Bad fix #2: Rely on multitasking

What it is: Asking employees to juggle multiple responsibilities.

Why it’s a problem: Employees divide their time into two buckets — orienting to the task at hand, and performing the task at hand. The more employees have to multitask, the more time they lose to reorienting, reducing the time they can devote to productive work.

Why it’s a temptation: Multitasking means never having to say no to a request. You can always promise to squeeze something in. Also, it improves IT’s performance on employee utilization — a bad but popular metric.

What to do instead: Eliminating multitasking is too much to shoot for, because there are, inevitably, more bits and pieces of work than there are staff to work on them. Also, the political pressure to squeeze something in usually overrules the logic of multitasking less. So instead of trying to stamp it out, attack the problem at the demand side instead of the supply side by enforcing a “Nothing-Is-Free” rule.

Bad fix #3: Ignore bad processes

What it is: The way work gets done is disorganized, ineffective, uncoordinated, undocumented, inconsistent, and idiosyncratic.

Why it’s a problem: When each employee independently figures out the way to get something done, IT’s practices are, in effect, in a perpetual state of alpha testing. Processes never improve because no two people ever do them the same way or build on past successes.

Why it’s a temptation: Defining, documenting, training, and insisting everyone follows well-defined processes is a lot of work, not to mention that it can make a manager unpopular. After all, for most employees doing things the way they want is a whole lot more fun than doing things the institution’s way. Worse, doing things the institution’s way and insisting on it will lead to accusations that you’re turning IT into a stifling, choking bureaucracy.

What to do instead: Encourage a “culture of process” throughout your organization.

Yes, this is just the headline, and there’s a whole lot of thought and work associated with making it real. Not everything can be reduced to an e-zine article. Sorry.

Bad fix #4: Holding people accountable

What it is: According to its proponents, it’s how to make sure everyone does their best to avoid making mistakes and do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Why it’s a problem: Holding people accountable is root cause analysis predicated on the assumption that if something goes wrong it must be someone’s fault. It’s a flawed assumption because most often, when something goes wrong, it’s the result of bad systems and processes, not someone screwing up.

When a manager holds someone accountable they’re really just blame-shifting. Managers are, after all, accountable for their organization’s systems and processes, aren’t they?

Second problem: If you hold people accountable when something goes wrong, they’ll do their best to conceal the problem from you. And the longer nobody deals with a problem, the worse it gets.

One more: If you hold people accountable whenever something doesn’t work, they’re unlikely to take any risks, because why would they?

Why it’s a temptation: Finding someone to blame is, compared to serious root cause analysis, easy, and fixing the “problem” is, compared to improving systems and practices, child’s play. As someone once said, hard work pays off sometime in the indefinite future, but laziness pays off right now.

What to do instead: Whenever something goes wrong, first fix the immediate problem — aka “stop the bleeding.” Then, figure out which systems and processes failed to prevent the problem and fix them so the organization is better prepared next time.

And if it turns out the problem really was that someone messed up, figure out if they need better training and coaching, if they just got unlucky, if they took a calculated risk, or if they really are a problem employee you need to punish — what “holding people accountable” means in practice.

Bad fix #5: Keeping you in the loop

What it is: A consequence of the no-surprises rule — if something happens in your department, you’re supposed to know about it before it becomes visible to your peers and management.

Why it’s a problem: It isn’t a problem. Unless, that is, you make keeping you in the loop a higher priority than fixing what’s gone wrong, and especially if it means whoever is trying to fix the problem has to get managerial approval before taking whatever steps they need to take.

Why it’s a temptation: Being kept in the loop reduces the fear that a manager will be blindsided and look bad to their management. Also, it makes a manager feel important: “I have to take this call” is almost as compelling as, back in the old days, having their pager start to buzz.

What to do instead: This is a softball, isn’t it? Just make sure everyone knows that, should a problem arise, priority #1 is fixing it. Briefing you is priority #2 or #3. Or maybe #27.

Not everything is hard to figure out.

And, a suggestion

Set up an anonymous one-question survey. Invite all IT employees to participate. The one question builds on the aforementioned Peter Drucker observation: “What are we in IT management doing that interferes with your ability to do your work?

Publicize the most common responses, take them seriously, and repeat the survey quarterly.

And if any of the common responses surprise you, revisit your organizational listening program, because clearly the one you have in place isn’t working.

IT Leadership

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For companies looking for an edge in the tight talent market, a solid DEI strategy and employee engagement often go hand in hand, creating a balance that fosters an inclusive work environment. When employees feel they can bring their authentic selves to work, it can result in higher levels of employee productivity and satisfaction, improved retention rates, and more effective recruiting efforts.

Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina (BCBSNC) is one organization reaping the benefits of a robust DEI strategy, which the company began overhauling in 2020, starting with the establishment of an official diversity council. The idea was sparked by CEO Tunde Sotunde, MD, MBA, FAAP, to establish a “strategy, measurable goals, and a roadmap” around DEI, says Pam Diggs, MPH, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at BCBSNC.

And those efforts have paid off, with BCBSNC coming in at No. 1 on Computerworld’s 2023 Best Places to Work in IT list for large companies. BCBSNC also ranked No. 1 for diversity and No. 2 for employee engagement.

As part of its DEI strategy, BCBSNC focused on three areas — people and culture, healthcare equity, and strategic partnerships for economic mobility and community. Establishing this as the “Northstar” has helped realize DEI efforts throughout the organization, getting everyone on the same page and working toward shared goals, says Diggs.  

“We deepened our commitment to ‘better health care for all.’ It is embedded in our purpose. When we say ‘for all,’ we are looking at the way we treat our employees internally as well, making sure that all our employees feel like this is an inclusive space to work in and to grow in. That way, they’re able to show up in an inclusive way for our customers and our communities,” she says.

Providing a ladder to the top

As part of its DEI efforts, BCBSNC runs an IT Leadership and Diversity Development Experience Rotation program, called Ladder, that connects BIPOC IT leaders with BIPOC IT professionals early in their careers. These relationships help entry-level and early-career professionals to develop their careers and navigate the workplace.

Representation is crucial, especially for improving diversity up the ranks. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” Diggs says, adding that BIPOC and women IT workers often don’t see themselves in leadership positions, simply because of the lack of representation further up the ladder toward the executive level.

BCBSNC’s Ladder program addresses this issue by fostering leadership relationships for BIPOC IT workers. By connecting seasoned IT pros who understand the nuances of being underrepresented in the industry, early-career IT workers gain access to a wealth of knowledge, mentorship, and a roadmap toward leadership. Participants also have access to tailored training opportunities, as well as opportunities for sponsorship, which can be vital for progressing your career.

“To have a mentor is so important. We see in our data that the participants in our mentorship programs have higher retention rates and higher internal mobility rates, but then the sponsorship takes it a step further.” Diggs says. “We’re encouraging our mentors to think about ways that they can be sponsors. Taking a step further to advocate for individuals when they’re not in the room.”

Rotational program as onramp to IT

The rotational component of Ladder recruits companywide through posted opportunities and direct outreach to employees who qualify. Employees who qualify include anyone in a “pre-professional role” who has an interest in learning what it takes to be an IT professional.

Hiring internally gives the added benefit of bringing on workers familiar with other sides of the business. That knowledge can serve IT well, as they’ll bring outside perspectives from other departments to their roles. For example, someone who has worked in customer service may have a unique take on process improvements, roadblocks, and technology that can help improve the experience for employees and customers alike.

The rotational program takes place over two years, with participants cycling through three rotations to get a feel for various opportunities in IT. Participants are also given the chance to connect with leaders in various areas of the company. Once they’ve completed the program and identify where they want to go next, participants are typically matched with a career at Blue Cross.

Tynia Burrows found out about the Rotational Development Program (RDP) through an internal posting. Prior to joining the program, Burrows worked as a lead project coordinator specialist in Portfolio Management and was “always curious about other opportunities I could take at Blue Cross NC,” she says. Her first rotation was with File Transfer Services, and she’s currently in her second rotation with Enterprise Security.

Tynia Burrows, Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina

BCBSNC

The program has completely changed Burrows’ perception of IT, noting that RDP “brings new perspectives and personalities together,” giving everyone a “different outlook when solving programs or improving processes,” she says.

“The structure and support I’ve received through the Rotational Development Program is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career. This program is a great stepping stone, especially for those who have the drive, but are unsure how to seek out opportunities on their own. I’m thankful Blue Cross NC has this program available to employees — it’s allowed me to explore new opportunities, build connections throughout the company, and has helped me understand my value and strengths,” says Burrows.

Opening talent pipelines through internships

BCBSNC IT also works closely with the talent acquisition team and employee networks to recruit at women-focused IT conferences and events. The department has also reshaped its talent pipeline to support diversity through recruitment and internship programs centered around HBCUs.

This year, BCBSNC partnered with the North Carolina’s Governor’s HBCU internship program and recently restructured requirements for the company’s rotational program to give interns the opportunity to apply for RDP after their internship ends. BCBSNC also collaborates with local colleges, such as Durham Tech, to recruit diverse tech talent for apprenticeships and internships.

Ultimately, BCBSNC’s commitment to DEI has helped diversify the workforce, while bolstering employee engagement and retention. Diversity is more than a benchmark for BCBSNC; it’s a vital part of the overall business strategy that helps to drive growth and innovation, as well as employee and customer satisfaction.

“That’s what diversity is all about — it helps companies, teams, and programs be more innovative, more creative, and more productive because we’re bringing in [fresh] perspectives,” says Diggs.

And those perspectives help position BCBSNC to better impact the constituencies it serves, Diggs says, adding that BCBSNC has bolstered its focus not only on equity in the workplace but on healthcare equality as well, given that several “social drivers of health, [including] transportation, affordable housing, food security, and social isolation” can impact up to 80% of a person’s overall health and wellbeing.

The organization now has an entire team dedicated to identifying ways they can change and restructure benefits for members to improve their experience, with a focus on DEI. This group also works to find opportunities for the organization to invest in local communities, with a priority on addressing issues surround systemic bias in the healthcare industry. 

“It can be anything from making sure that we’re addressing systemic bias, that we are connecting equity to the way that we do business, or the way that our providers interact with our patients,” says Diggs, adding that if employees are engaged and satisfied at work, they will be better equipped to help customers and patients navigating the healthcare system.

Diversity and Inclusion

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When leaders consider how technology has enabled the transformation of business models over the past several years, few would disagree that the world has changed dramatically. Retail, entertainment, music, and banking have largely moved online. It’s a familiar story: Netflix beat Blockbuster; Amazon beat Borders. More recently, Tesla has transformed the experience of buying, owning, and driving a car.

Tesla, Uber, and many other stories of business innovation have this in common: Their business models have technology at their cores. They’re in the software business, and they compete on user experience. They recognize that innovative use of technology is enabling new business models with competition-crushing advantages built right in.

This is why innovation programs have become so critical to sustaining the success of enterprises. Yet, many leaders have not accepted that their organizations need to change at the same pace as the rest of the world. They haven’t examined the explicit and implicit organizational values that could be holding them back from innovation. In addition, they may have yet to embrace and incubate innovation as an essential function of their businesses.

It’s essential that organizations foster innovation to keep moving ahead, implementing meaningful changes to help incubate innovation. We often suggest an innovation portfolio framework, outlined below, to accelerate technology-powered transformation.

Why incubating technology-focused innovation is important

Securing and maintaining competitive advantage now requires organizations to accelerate technology-powered transformation. Whether they use custom-built software or software as a service, organizations’ processes are orchestrated and supported by the software they deploy. The technologies they buy and build to support transformation are vital to their continued success. Businesses must remain ever-ready to innovate as an aspect of their routine operations.

Building the capabilities to refine and innovate new business models is critical. Two stories of innovation and competition illustrate this point:

Netscape founder Mark Andreesen has famously said: “software is eating the world.” He should know. In 1994, his open-source Netscape Navigator browser transformed the difficult-to-navigate world wide web with a user-friendly point-and-click interface. Soon after, Netscape achieved 80% of the browser market. In 1995, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer and, by bundling it with its winning Windows 95 product, swiftly eclipsed Navigator as the leading browser. Then in 2016, Google beat Internet Explorer with its Chrome browser, attaining this success on the strength of Google’s superior search technology.

Consider Domino’s, which redefined itself nearly a decade ago by transforming into a technology company. This iterative transformation started in 2015 when Domino’s redefined ordering pizza delivery via Twitter. Customers could tweet “#EasyOrder” or a pizza slice emoji to @Domino’s, and within 30 minutes, their pizza would be at their door. Behind the scenes, the company linked their customers’ Domino’s and Twitter profiles to enable this innovation. Domino’s knew each customer’s favorite order and preferred payment method. Does it sound like a lot could go wrong with this service? It did. Even so, Domino’s celebrates the experience as one of their early opportunities to become the technology company they are today. They’ve since added the next iteration, a chatbot, Order with Dom. They made the decision to be innovative, to be tech-first – and to change their culture.  It’s paid off, because through innovations like this one, they routinely top the list of quick-serve restaurants in the United States.

How to get into the software business

What does it take for an organization to shift from its current business-as-usual mindset and get into the software business? It takes incubating a winning innovation program, and that starts with knowing the customer and shifting the organization’s values. It takes adopting an innovation framework that accelerates the organization’s capacity for transformation.

Knowing the customer. Successful innovation takes presenting new value propositions directly to customers. Businesses can explore the journey their customers want to go on versus the journey they’re taking today. What they learn through such explorations leads to identifying tech-enabled ways to make customers’ lives easier and more convenient. As Jeff Bezos put it, speaking about Amazon’s development of the Kindle: “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.”

Shifting organizational values. Innovation programs spur change – even to an organization’s own values. In particular: “failure is okay” is an essential value in innovative organizations. Without failure, organizations won’t change, because folks who should be fostering and pursuing innovation will be too busy playing it safe. It’s admittedly difficult to begin this shift as it requires change to organizational culture, values, and reward systems. But remember Domino’s? Their Twitter feature failed many times, but the company still counts the experience among its innovation successes, because they learned a lot through delivering and operating a revolutionary new service.

Establishing a framework for innovation

Leaders are starting to understand that innovation is a macro trend. When leaders reach that realization, they’ll want to bring all their authority to bear to incubate a strong and empowered innovation program.

First, they’ll want to consider where the function will reside within the organization, who will own it, and how it will be supported. They’ll want to ensure the owner of the innovation program has real power to make decisions and drive change throughout the enterprise. (Many organizations already have what they call an innovation program. It may be funded, and it may be operational, but if it lacks power to affect change, it won’t achieve transformational success. As mentioned above, leaders must be willing to tolerate failure to move forward.)

Once ownership and support are established, innovation leaders will want to take a portfolio approach to explore several innovations in parallel and balance investments across those innovations. The portfolio approach conveys this advantage: if the program is exploring ten or twelve new ideas, having one idea that results in significant transformation is a solid success for the whole innovation program. “It’s okay to fail” means only a few new ideas may flourish. If no innovations grow into significant transformation, it may mean the ideas are too wild or neglectful of customer desires. If all experiments grow into operationalized changes, then the team might be playing it too safely.

Ideally, it’s not just okay to fail. It’s great to fail fast to build momentum, maximize learning and manage risk. Failing fast means thinking big but starting small by pursuing time-boxed innovations. When the time’s expired, teams can review results and then scale up successful experiments. They can learn from failures by completing retrospectives in the agile way: exploring what worked and what didn’t while identifying underlying causes.

Innovation: an essential business function

It’s technology that drives transformation of business models today. Innovative business models have technology at their cores. Every organization that means to keep ahead of its competition must be in the software business, and that’s why incubating innovation programs has become essential to sustaining success and remaining competitive. Leaders can incubate innovation by acquiring deep knowledge of customers’ needs, adopting “it’s okay to fail” as a core value, and establishing a framework to pursue a portfolio of innovations swiftly. If an enterprise has not been changing at the same pace as the rest of the world, it isn’t too late to embrace and incubate innovation as an essential function of any business.

Learn more about Protiviti’s Innovation vs. Technical Debt Tug of War survey results.

Connect with the Authors

Christine Livingston
Managing Director, Emerging Technology

Chris Daniel
Managing Director, Cloud Solutions

Nathan Hanks
Managing Director, Emerging Technology

Digital Transformation

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Public cloud services provider Oracle on Monday said it will launch a new cloud region in Serbia, which will make it the first among rivals including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and IBM, to offer a hyperscale data center in the Eastern European country.

The new cloud region, which will serve Southeast Europe, will be located at the Jovanovac village region in the proximity of Serbia’s fourth largest city, Kragujevac, Oracle said in a statement.

The Serbian government has plans to develop Kragujevac into an innovation hub, earmarking nearly 56,000 square meters and €120 million (US$130 million) for the entire effort, which is to be carried out in three phases.

The new region will also support the increasing cloud computing demands of private and public sector organizations throughout Serbia, Oracle said.

Oracle will offer over 100 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services and applications, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, and Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes via the upcoming region.

Other Oracle cloud regions in Europe are located in cities including Paris, Marseille, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Zurich, London, and Newport. Also, the company runs two government cloud regions in the UK.

Most rival hyperscalers have presence in cities such as London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Zurich, Stockholm and Madrid.

Microsoft is planning to open new regions in Vienna, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Athens, Milan, Warsaw,  and Madrid, the company’s website shows.

Oracle continues to invest in cloud regions

Oracle has continued to invest in expanding its cloud region footprint in an effort to compete with rival hyperscalers including AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud.

In addition to its existing regions in Europe, Oracle has announced intentions to launch two sovereign cloud regions in the region, located in  Germany and Spain.

Last month, the company announced its intent to open a second region in Singapore to meet demand.

Oracle also has plans to invest about $2.4 billion every quarter for the next few quarters on cloud infrastructure, CEO Safra Catz said during an earnings call for the quarter that ended in November.

In December last year, the company launched a public cloud region in Chicago, its fourth in the US after Virginia, California, and Arizona.

Cloud Computing

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After years of prioritizing digital transformation and focusing on innovation, many CIOs are reporting that their No. 1 goal now is supporting operational efficiency.

CIO.com’s 2023 State of the CIO report, its 22nd such annual survey, showed that more CIOs today are seeing improved operational efficiency as the top imperative.

Some 45% of respondents listed “increasing operational efficiency” as a business need driving their IT agenda, propelling it to the top spot on the list of business initiatives driving IT budgets today, besting other critical business needs such as increasing cybersecurity protections, furthering transformation, and even improving profitability.

But IT leaders say there a host of other business needs shaping IT initiatives today that are not only nearly as important as driving operational efficiency but are frequently supportive of it.

That’s what Matt Mead, CTO of the technology modernization firm SPR, sees in the market.

“Driving efficiency is very much on everyone’s minds,” he says, while quickly adding that CIOs are investing in technologies that help them address multiple business needs. He cites automation as a case in point, noting that the technology can transform processes as well as improve customer and employee experiences, all while creating more efficient operations. Cloud migrations and data analytics projects do much the same, Mead says.

Top 15 business needs driving IT spend

The State of the CIO survey asked 837 IT leaders and 201 line-of-business (LOB) participants a range of questions regarding their current and future IT strategies, with 56% reporting that they expected their overall IT budgets to increase this year. In terms of business initiatives driving their IT spending this year, the top 15 enterprise needs are:

Increasing operational efficiency: 45%

Increasing cybersecurity protections: 44%

Transforming existing business processes: 38%

Improving the customer experience: 36%

Improving profitability: 27%

Increasing employee productivity: 25%

New product development: 22%

Increasing topline revenue for the business: 20%

Developing new digital revenue streams: 19%

Improving/optimizing the employee experience: 19%

Enhancing hybrid work technologies: 18%

Improving talent acquisition/retention: 17%

Meeting compliance requirements: 16%

Monetizing company data: 14%

Adhering to environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards: 11%

The top portion of this year’s list varies from last year’s findings in notable ways, with increasing cybersecurity protections having been the top business need driving IT budgets in 2022, followed by increasing operational efficiency, improving customer experience, transforming existing business processes, improving employee productivity, and improving profitability.

The shifts suggest that a portion of enterprises are moving on somewhat from last year’s protection posture in favor of revamping business processes and increasing efficiencies, and that the pandemic’s lens on employee productivity is giving way to an eye on profitability as economic headwinds rise.

Business pressures drive IT

Multiple CIOs across various industries say their IT agendas line up with the State of the CIO Report findings.

Woody Groton, the CIO for Draper, a nonprofit research and development organization, until April 2023, says the IT strategy he had put in place is a testament to that.

“Operational efficiency and profitability and productivity all tie into the business pressures we’re all seeing,” he says, adding CIOs continue to hear calls for IT to help reduce costs and drive efficiencies. “There’s a renewed focus on all this; that’s something I’m experiencing.”

But Groton says the pressure for operational efficiency isn’t about identifying technologies that can help slash costs — as had been the case in the past. Instead, the imperative is to determine how IT can improve operational efficiency while also meeting other key business needs, such as transforming processes and improving customer and employee experiences, he says.

The IT plans Gorton had implemented for 2023 at Draper called for moving the company from an on-prem ERP system to a software-as-a-service option; Groton says such a move enables business units to update existing business processes, with the expectation that the company will enjoy both transformation and improved operational efficiency as a result.

Groton’s IT strategy called for moving other systems to the cloud to gain efficiencies, spur additional process transformations, and boost the company’s cybersecurity posture — all top business priorities at Draper that correspond to the CIO.com research findings.

Automation efforts, such as robotic process automation (RPA), and implementing software with built-in AI capabilities are other key initiatives, given their ability to shift workers away from mundane time-consuming tasks to higher-value activities, thereby generating further efficiencies and improved user experiences, Groton says.

As Draper CIO, Groton also focused on meeting the company’s push for maturing its cybersecurity posture. To that end, Draper adopted a zero-trust security model, with IT implementing various technologies, such as network detection and response (NDR) software to support that defense-in-depth strategy.

Draper’s continuing drive to maximize its use of data also meant more investments in business intelligence and analytics tools, Groton says, while its ongoing hybrid work environment necessitates ongoing investments in technologies that support and improve both worker experience and productivity.

Max Horne, CIO and senior vice president of Colonial Savings in Texas, has a similar list of business objectives to fulfill. He specifically listed operational efficiency, cybersecurity, and “projects that can help us bring more business in” as top drivers at Colonial.

Maturing the bank’s data and analytics program and improving customer experience are also top business objectives today, Horne says, noting, however, that these items are perennial priorities, with their rankings on the priority list changing mainly based on fluctuations in economic and business conditions.

“I find my project portfolio has always had those things in it,” Horne says.

Addressing multiple business at once

Other research shows a similar list of business imperatives shaping the IT agenda this year.

The IT Priorities: 2023 report, conducted by research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan for tech company GoTo, surveyed 1,000 IT decision-makers and found that growing revenue was the No. 1 business objective for the year and that 83% of surveyed organizations intended to achieve that growth by acquiring more customers. Improving operational efficiencies was second on the list of business objectives, followed by reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Snow Software’s 2023 IT Priorities Report found that reducing IT costs topped the list, followed by reducing security risks, delivering digital transformation, adopting new technologies to improve day-to-day operations, and driving company growth.

CIOs say they’re working to collectively address those multiple and often overlapping needs.

That’s the case for James Pennington, vice president, CIO, and HIPAA security officer at Southwell, a nonprofit healthcare system in Georgia.

He lists the business need to accelerate growth, strengthen the workforce, and reduce expenses as his top drivers for IT spending. He also cites the Southwell’s commitment to safety and quality as a top business need shaping IT today.

“As with most of the healthcare provider market, we are struggling to rebound to pre-pandemic volumes and revenue. Most of our technology initiatives are based on tangible ROI and/or maximization of our legacy investments. As such, our strategy centers around innovative solutions leveraging key strategic vendors in order to capitalize value,” he says.

Micha Albertijn, CIO of Meat&More, a vertically integrated Belgium-based company that incorporates food production and processing as well as distribution and retail activities, says he, too, is working to meet multiple business needs of near equal importance.

First, Meat&More is pushing for operational excellence. “The more efficient and effective our processes are, the better our company is running,” Albertijn says. “This can be translated to how we offer digital solutions to our employees and customers and vendors.”

The other two main drivers are becoming more customer-centric and containing spending, which means benchmarking activities from a financial point of view and working to “right size” in terms of budget, he says.

IT is working on various initiatives to support those business imperatives, with several IT projects delivering value in all three areas, Albertijn says, pointing to his team’s work with the sales and marketing department on data-driven know-your-customer projects, which help Meat&More be more customer-centric while supporting top-line growth and efficient use of marketing and sales spend.

“A topic that was already high on our agenda before my arrival but today is even far higher on the agenda is cybersecurity,” Albertijn adds. “We feel due to circumstances and also due to recent events that cybersecurity is asking for far more attention.”

Consequently, he and his IT team are spending more resources in that area, with money going to improving the team’s security skills and implementing next-generation security tools such as those that use AI to deliver more effective threat detection and response.

Focusing on the enterprise mission

CIOs say such intense focus on business needs — and aligning IT spending and the overall IT strategy to them — has become critical for enterprise success.

Bryan Kennedy, director of museum technology and digital operations at the Science Museum of Minnesota, speaks to that point, saying that the museum’s executive team is focused on “using technology to drive forward its mission.”

For Kennedy, that means investing in technologies such as automation and AI-based tools to streamline operations with an eye toward delivering efficiencies — echoing a familiar refrain.

It also means moving more workloads to the cloud, which is both helping the museum to transform processes while also cutting costs. And it means investing in data and analytics to help the museum become more data-driven — with the goal of using those insights to understand where it can grow and how it can move further into the digital space.

At the same time, Kennedy — like his CIO colleagues in other industries — says he has seen his business-side colleagues become more committed to maturing the museum’s cybersecurity posture. Kennedy has invested in various security technologies — including a password management tool and cloud access security brokers — as he moves the institute to a zero-trust security model.

Kennedy’s priorities mirror other findings in the 2023 State of the CIO survey, which noted that CIOs this year anticipate their involvement to increase in cybersecurity (70%), data analysis (55%), data privacy (55%), AI/machine learning (55%), and customer experience (53%).

The study further found that most respondents (77%) believe the visibility of the CIO role will continue to be elevated within their organizations. Already, 38% of LOB respondents consider the CIO as a strategic advisor who proactively identifies business needs and opportunities with another 25% viewing the CIO as a consultant who is evaluating and advising on business needs and technology choices.

Budget, Budgeting, Business IT Alignment, IT Leadership, Technology Industry

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With centuries of tradition behind it, tennis as a sport has been highly resistant to change. Other sports have been quick to embrace the use of data and analytics to transform how athletes are recruited, trained, and prepped for competitions, how they adjust to changing circumstances during play, and how they break down successes and failures after competition.

“It’s fair to say that tennis has lived up to its roots as a traditional sport,” says Mat Pemble, executive director of IT for the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the sport’s governing body. “We’ve not been one of the fastest sports when it comes to embracing new technology and data analytics, particularly on court.”

Still, the appetite for innovation is there. Electronic line calling is a prime example that Jamie Capel-Davies, head of science and technical for ITF, points to. So too is its embrace of smart racquets and wrist-worn devices, the first wave of which proved limiting in that they could provide data on how fast a player was swinging a racquet, for example, but couldn’t collect data on the outcome.

“You didn’t know whether that was a good shot or a bad shot or any other context around what was going on when you played it,” Capel-Davies says.

Serving performance data courtside

In the early 2000s, the ITF started working with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations, whose computer vision system uses timing data from multiple high-speed video cameras to triangulate the position of the ball in relation to the court. The technology made its debut at the Australian Open in 2003 and Wimbledon in 2007, and it provides the foundation for electronic line calling for the sport.

“One of the byproducts of that, because you’re tracking the ball to see whether it’s going to land in or out, you actually get a lot of data through the process: how fast people are hitting the ball, where they hit it from, and where it lands,” Capel-Davies says.

The ITF was quick to make use of that wealth of data on the presentation side of the sport but struggled to unlock its value for competitors. So, in 2021, the ITF partnered with Microsoft to power its match insights platform for the Billie Jean King Cup (BJK Cup) with the idea of transforming performance. The BJK Cup is the largest annual team competition in women’s sports, with 16 national teams qualifying to compete for the prestigious title each year. Like the Davis Cup for men, it is one of the few tennis competitions that allow the team captain to coach players during matches as they change sides between games.

The platform uses ball-tracking cameras and 3D radar systems to generate live on-court match data, which is fed into Azure and combined with live score data to provide insights into serving patterns, returns, and player movement around the court. Those insights are provided to team captains during the BJK Cup finals via a dashboard on Microsoft Surface devices.

“We’re really starting to focus on how that data can be used to support the players, the coaches, the teams, everyone involved behind the scenes on the performance side,” Pemble says.

By allowing court-side coaching, the BJK Cup presents a unique opportunity for the ITF to showcase the platform’s match-insight capabilities.

“They’re getting live data coming through as the match progresses, and that gives teams an opportunity to look at how they are performing against the game plan,” says Capel-Davies. “Does it need updating or adapting to the situation?”

Fine-tuning performance with in-match data

The ITF worked closely with Microsoft and representatives from BJK Cup teams to develop the analytics and their presentation to ensure the dashboard would provide meaningful insights. The captain is only allowed a few moments to coach their players when they change sides between games.

“One of the key things that we were looking at was what were the most important metrics and how can they be communicated effectively,” Capel-Davies says. “The great thing about the app is it’s very visual and it also has a reasonable amount of customization.”

For instance, it can be used to display serve placement and returns to help captains and players identify patterns. It can display how players return on breakpoints. After last year’s finals, the ITF worked with Microsoft to add new features based on feedback, including a visualization called “serve plus one,” which visualizes the third shot of a rally.

Beyond court-side insights, Capel-Davies says the platform also provides teams with value before and after matches. Prior to matches, the platform can provide insight into opponents to help develop a game plan by understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. After the match, the platform can be used to perform a post-mortem, providing insight into what worked, what didn’t, and what players can improve in the next match.

For now, the system is limited to the finals because it requires deployment of four to 12 cameras that are calibrated to a specific court. It’s also not used on clay courts because those typically don’t have electronic line calling.

“Tennis courts are the same size, but in practice the lines don’t always go in exactly the same place, so there’s a process by whereby the system is calibrated to the actual position of the lines and you also have to know something about the topography as well,” Capel-Davies says. “You don’t assume that the court is perfectly flat; you have to map that.”

For now, in-match insights are available only at the BJK Cup, but Pemble and Capel-Davies believe change is coming.

“There’s been a sort of slow, slow burn in tennis in terms of innovation and coaching, and I think this is demonstrating how good, quality coaching and good information to base that coaching on can really enhance the game,” Capel-Davies says.

“The appetite is there, and I think that extends from the largest tournaments, the grand slams and the world championships, the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup. But now I think that’s moving down to some of the lower levels of the game,” Pemble adds. “The accessibility of the technology and the data now is so much greater than it was even two, three years ago. It’s filtering down to the club level and a lot of the systems require much less in terms of technology support and teams to put in place and run them. We’re seeing a big amount of development across AI-based camera tracking systems. It’s automating a lot of that data processing and analytics generation.”

Digital Transformation, Machine Learning, Machine Vision

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Offering an extensive portfolio of ICT solutions and services in conjunction with its high-available data centers, fastest broadband internet and telecommunications networks for consumers and businesses, Dialog Enterprise is one of the most trusted information and communication technology brands in Asia. Now it is also the first provider in Sri Lanka to earn the VMware Sovereign Cloud distinction.

“More than 35,000 enterprises rely on us for the compute, storage and networking power they need to excel,” says Venura Mendis,  Head of ICT Business at Dialog Enterprise. “The cloud of course is a game-changer and our Dialog Enterprise Cloud gives customers in a wide range of industries the capabilities and flexibility inherent in a software-defined data center, complete with a self-service portal and hybrid cloud capabilities.”

Based on VMware technology and featuring numerous capabilities, among them Container PaaS service, Backup-as-a-Service and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, the Dialog Enterprise Cloud is the choice of many of the country’s industry leaders. This includes stalwarts in the nation’s banking, construction, education, government, healthcare, hospitality and dining, manufacturing, retail and transportation industries.

“We understand that different industries require different business solutions,” adds Mendis. “For that reason, we offer a broad array of solutions and services designed for various industries that can be customized for any business, along with completely bespoke offerings that draw on the extensive design and development expertise our team offers. Increasingly, we’ve seen a lot of demand for sovereign cloud offerings, particularly in highly regulated industries where the stakes are high and data privacy demands are great.”

To address this, Dialog Enterprise sought to earn VMware Sovereign Cloud distinction, becoming the first provider in the entire region to do so – a feat that echoed its earlier honor of being the first company in Sri Lanka to provide VMware Cloud Verified services. Mendis is quick to stress that while the company is currently the only company to have done so, the demand for sovereign clouds is great and growing rapidly.

“When a solution is a build on a robust framework like VMware’s, it simply and seamlessly works across VMware-based multi-cloud platforms, which makes it easier to lift and shift workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud while allowing for continual modernization at a much lower cost of ownership,” he says. “Now enterprises also increasingly want and demand the added ability to ensure full data sovereignty and jurisdictional control at all times. This includes making sure that data is never accessed by foreign parties in the context of maintenance or service.”

Mendis notes that because the data in its sovereign cloud is subject to the full jurisdictional control of Sri Lanka, full compliance with the country’s privacy laws can be guaranteed. This stands in stark contrast to the clouds offered by hyperscalers, but it is not the only reason customers are choosing a Sri Lankan sovereign cloud.

“Yes, customers are concerned about hosting their sensitive data in public clouds due to issues like data confidentiality, data loss, data storage needs, security and transparency issues,” says Mendis. “But it’s not all about safeguards, or the ability we have to guarantee compliance with local laws and regulations. Enterprises also turn to us because our sovereign Infrastructure-as-a-Service offers low-latency connectivity options, an intuitive portal, pricing models that are based consumption and high performance.”

Notably, it also integrates seamlessly with the myriad innovative solutions the company offers, from those that harness the potential of the Internet of Things, to broader Enterprise solutions platforms. This includes managed SDWAN and SASE solutions, Data as a Service offerings and multiple other Cyber and physical security solutions  D – among many others.

“As organizations across industries look to digital transformation to drive growth, the cloud will by necessity play a core role,” says Mendis. “And it is no surprise that it is increasingly important to ensure that sensitive data be stored and processed in a secure and compliant environment. The sovereign cloud solution we offer gives our clients much-needed peace of mind and the knowledge that their data is securely stored in a physically and logically isolated environment, managed by a team of experts. It’s only natural that more organizations will want that.”

Learn more about Dialog Enterprise and its partnership with VMware here.

Cloud Management

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Following almost 3 years of enabling remote working, securing business operations and enhancing productivity levels, forward-thinking CIOs are stepping up to spearhead transformation agendas in Singapore.

Leveraging a once-in-a-career opportunity, IT leaders are building new strategies to accelerate the potential of digital, mirroring boardroom ambitions to create competitive differentiation in 2023 and beyond.

According to State of the CIO 2023 findings, 90% of CIOs say that their role is becoming more digital and innovation focused.  

Yet such ambitions come with a caveat as CIOs build a foundation for innovation in Singapore amid an environment of legacy systems, out-dated mindsets, talent shortages and rising threat levels.

The level of uncertainty in the current operating environment was evident, and whilst companies were seeing no real direct impact at present, there is a mixed approach to investment with some being “cautious” and others seeing it as “essential.”

Those in the cautious camp are seeing new investments being delayed. Whilst those who see it as essential have a mandate to change as their business model is being disrupted.

Building on Success

The pandemic raised the status of IT within organizations, and the fact the businesses continued to run was down to the fast actions of the IT department.

The shift to digital also sped up decision making across enterprises with decisions being made in days instead of months.

The risk appetite of enterprises also increased as the risk of not implementing a technology could have lead to the business not operating at all.

Tech budgets are also growing with the State of the CIO survey (APAC) 2023 seeing that  58% of APAC CIO’s expect their budgets to increase in 2023, with another 32% saying that it will remain the same as the previous year.

“We are seeing a continuation of interest in innovation from the prior year across organizations,” observed XXXXXXXX at VMWare. He continues “however what is interesting is where this innovation is happening – for some it is innovation in simplification, for others it is disruptive innovation.”

Taking Stock and Driving Value from Investments

With many investments having been made during the Pandemic with accelerated decision processes, there is an activity of “taking stock” of what has been purchased, and driving value from past purchases, whether it be hardware, software or services.

In some cases, this has led to a more complex environment, requiring enterprises to take a step back and to evaluate.

Simplification

A recurring theme is the need to simplify – whether it be applications or infrastructure, with the premise being a simpler structure is easier to manage.

“This is easier said than done, with 73% of enterprises using two or more clouds,” said XXXX. He continues “bringing the mixture of on-premise, public clouds, private clouds and edge together is key to moving forward and putting in place an architecture that not only works, but enables innovation.”

But this area is also the one where APAC CIO’s are seeing the greatest challenge with 42% saying that technology integration / implementation is the top skill required to support the ongoing digital business initiatives (State of the CIO survey (APAC) 2023), followed by IT/ Cloud architecture at 33%.

Overcoming Challenges

“Having the right partners is going to be key. As organizations struggle to find the right and affordable talent necessary to continue the innovation journey, bringing in partners who can share the load and bring their expertise is going to key.” Said XXXXXX. “We have worked with many organizations and have helped them overcome the challenges they face.

The top five areas where we see concerns are
1) risk related to security, data or privacy issues;
2) Inconsistent infrastructure in APIs, databases, networks and security;
3) the need to hire or maintain new, specialized skills to support public clouds;
4) the ability to manage / optimize spend; and
5) increased complexity from policies that manage individual environments.”

Innovation and Modernisation: What is the Appetite?

The appetite for innovation in Singapore is high, however the drivers of change vary. From strategic organizational change, where a de-centralization strategy requires splitting the business, through fundamental changes in technology, such as the shift to electric vehicles, and the impact on developing a new ecosystem.

New digital revenue models are also on the rise, with more organizations “white labelling” their platforms and licensing their usage to other companies. This has also allowed Singapore companies to expand to other geographies.

“A good example of this is Informatics Academy, whom we have worked with to modernise their IT infrastructure to better connect, secure, and coordinate operations across its global campuses in Singapore and the UK.” said XXXX.

The exploration of generative AI is happening across most organizations with ongoing projects to see where and how it can be adopted. Concerns remain with its use, especially around security and ethics. But the power of the tool is one that has most enterprises excited.

The challenge will be having the strategy to embed generative AI within the organization, and to also change the organization to take full advantage of the possibilities that exist in changing business processes.  

Tha ability to use generative AI to explore within a companies firewall to bring disparate data sources together is an area of great interest, being seen as a disrupting technology. It is clear that those organization that can adopt, embed, and change to take advantage of the power of generative AI will be better positioned for the uncertain times ahead.

Innovation is being ignited in Singapore.

VMware

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Artificial intelligence (AI) in 2023 feels a bit like déjà vu to me. Back in 2001, as I was just entering the venture industry, I remember the typical VC reaction to a start-up pitch was, “Can’t Microsoft replicate your product with 20 people and a few months of effort, given the resources they have?” Today, any time a new company is pitching its product that uses AI to do ‘X,’ the VC industry asks, “Can’t ChatGPT do that?”

Twenty-two years later, Microsoft is at the table once again. This time they’re making a $13 billion bet by partnering with OpenAI and bringing to market new products like Security Copilot to make sense of the threat landscape using the recently launched text-generating GPT-4 (more on that below). But just as Microsoft did not inhibit the success of thousands of software start-ups in the early 2000s, I do not expect Microsoft or any vendor to own this new AI-enabled market. 

However, the market explosion and hype around AI across the business and investment spectrum over the past few months has led people to ask: what are we to make of it all? And more specifically, how do CIOs, CSOs, and cybersecurity teams learn to deal with technology that may pose serious security and privacy risks?

The good, the bad, and the scary

I look at the good, the bad, and the scary of this recent Microsoft announcement. What’s incredible about ChatGPT and its offspring is that it brings an accessible level of functionality to the masses. It’s versatile, easy to use, and usually produces solid results.

Traditionally, organizations have needed sophisticated, trained analysts to sort through, analyze, and run processes for their security data. This required knowledge of particular query languages and configurations relevant to each product, like Splunk, Elastic, Palo Alto/Demisto, and QRadar. It was a difficult task, and the available talent pool was never enough.   

That difficulty in SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) still exists today. SIEM helps enterprises collect and analyze security-related data from servers, applications, and network devices. The data is analyzed to identify potential security threats, alert security teams to suspicious activity, and provide insights into a company’s security defenses. SIEM systems typically use advanced analytics to identify patterns, anomalies, and other indicators of potential threats.

SOAR builds on SIM capabilities by automating security workflows and helping businesses respond more quickly and efficiently to security incidents. SOAR platforms can integrate with various security products, including enterprise firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and vulnerability scanners. SIEM/SOAR is where you orchestrate action for an incident response plan. Using those actions helps in the remediation process. Managing the process and products involved in remediation is difficult.

Now, Microsoft is putting a stake in the ground with its generative AI Security Copilot tool. With Security Copilot, the tech company is looking to boost the capability of its data security products for deep integrated analysis and responses. By integrating GPT-4 into Security Copilot, Microsoft hopes to work with companies to

more easily identify malicious activity;

summarize and make sense of threat intelligence;

gather data on various attack incidents by prioritizing the type and level of incidents; and

recommend to clients how to remove and remediate diverse threats in real-time.

And guess what? Theoretically, it should be easier to sort through all that data using GPT APIs and other tools or figure out how to leverage these on incident data. These systems should also make more automated response and orchestration much simpler.

Overall, the emergence of GPT-4 may be a step towards the industry’s dream of “Moneyball for cyber,” allowing for a more robust defensive posture by leveraging the experience and wisdom of the crowds. And it will allow for a stronger defense of smaller organizations that do not have sufficient resources and expertise today.

It’s all about trust

However, there are still significant obstacles to overcome regarding adoption and trust. First and foremost, there is still reluctance among many organizations to share their incident data with others, even if de-identified, as it could potentially lead to leaked information, bad press, and brand damage. Sharing has been talked about for years, but is rarely done in a systematic, or technology-delivered manner for these reasons. The best sharing practices followed today are industry CISOs talking amongst their tight peer group when something significant occurs. Thus, given the reluctance to share in any meaningful way previously, I suspect that the industry will take a long time to put their data in this or any third-party platform for fear that it exposes them in some way.

Another hurdle is overcoming hesitancy about privacy and security concerns. Microsoft claims that integrating data into its systems will maintain privacy and security. Security Copilot will not train on nor learn from their customers’ incident or vulnerability data. However, without full transparency, the market will have lingering doubts. Users may fear that attackers may use the same GPT-based platform to develop attacks that target the vulnerabilities in their systems that it has become aware of, no matter what the ELA states to the contrary.  Wouldn’t an attacker love to ask, “Write an exploit that allows me to navigate the defenses at Corporation X?”

There is also a question about how the system can learn from the newest attacks if it is not training on the data from customer organizations. The system would be more powerful if it did learn in the wild from customer incident and vulnerability data.

Even without specific details learned from any one customer, assuming full transparency on security and privacy is guaranteed, given the wide aperture of knowledge that can be obtained from other public and non-public sources, won’t this AI-based system become an adversary’s favorite exploit development tool?

Given all of this, there are potential risks and rewards involved in using ChatGPT in cybersecurity.

Microsoft has major ambitions for Security Copilot. It’s a tall order to fill, and I hope they get it right for everyone’s sake.

Know the potential consequences

GPT-4 under Microsoft auspices might be a great tool if it figures out ways to cut off all that potentially harmful activity. If it can train the system to focus on the positive and do it so that proprietary internal data is not compromised, it would be a potent tool for mainstream analysis of security incidents and security. To date, this has only been done with very sophisticated, high-priced people and complex systems that cater to the higher end of the market.

But suppose the mid-tier companies, who can’t afford top-quality cybersecurity resources or the best data security teams, choose to open up their data to Microsoft and GPT-4? In that case, I just hope they know there may be possible side effects. Caveat emptor!

Artificial Intelligence, Data and Information Security, Security

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Traditionally, content delivery networks (CDNs) were used to cache files close to consumers, enabling media publishers to stream video and gaming software to customers as quickly as possible, and allowing high-stakes web application providers to deliver web pages equally fast.

Eventually, application and content owners found these networks had use beyond caching that enabled digital experiences to be better, safer, and more personalized and profitable. The market responded with edge platforms, an evolution of CDNs that can handle the compute and data workloads that were historically the domain of data centers and clouds. Edge platforms are now a fundamental part of every consumer-facing business’s digital stack.

How does this evolution from traditional CDN to an Edge platform help businesses and improve consumer experiences?

Benefit 1: holistic security protection

With the proliferation of on-premise, cloud, and SaaS systems, technology leaders are struggling to protect an increasingly diverse and expanding attack surface area from bad actors. Further, leaders often tend to overcompensate by implementing chains of security solutions, creating single points of failure, and adding latency and performance bottlenecks between security layers. Given that the average web page generates 65-70 requests on mobile and desktop, and latency accumulates with every page, performance, in turn, is negatively impacted.

The distributed nature of modern applications across multiple clouds, on-prem data centers, and SaaS tools means that the traditional notion of a security perimeter is no longer applicable. To ensure holistic protection, organizations must adopt an edge-enabled solution that can be present across all these environments, otherwise, routing all traffic through a central office using VPNs can cause undesirable latencies and network costs.

By moving security to the edge – in front of cloud providers, application, and storage servers – your infrastructure and data is protected wherever it lives.

Benefit 2: increased consumer experience with speed and AI-driven personalization

Generally, the closer you can move compute to the user, the faster your application will be. Edge computing enables companies to push components of web applications down to the edge of the network and even into the consumer’s device, speeding up page loads on web and mobile devices.

To do so requires intelligent predictive prefetching, which anticipates what actions, data or content the consumer will need next, and pushes the info to their browser or mobile device in anticipation of the request. This effectively makes web pages and mobile screens load instantly.

In addition to speed, the edge can be the ideal layer to implement personalization informed by first-party data or AI algorithms. Organizations can use the knowledge of their end users’ preferences, keywords searches, and geolocation to display products that are relevant to the user in real time.

Benefit 3: reduced costs

Nearly 75% of executives consider edge computing a strategic investment, in part due to the lower cost of bandwidth. Edge computing allows local data centers to crunch their own data instead of sending it to a central data center or the cloud. By processing locally, the amount of transmitted data across the network is greatly reduced, resulting in less bandwidth and connectivity.

Remote servers or data centers act independently, regardless of outages or connectivity to the central data center. Removing dependency on a central network allows digital businesses to be more available and agile in constantly changing markets.

Edgio

To realize true cost savings from the edge requires a balanced approach. Sometimes, it’s more efficient to compute a workload in the cloud and cache it to multiple edge nodes, instead of having all nodes execute redundant work. That’s why it’s important to use a holistic application platform, such that of Edgio’s, that allows you intelligently leverage the capabilities of both the cloud and edge for peak performance and cost optimization.

Conclusion

Edge platforms are taking the market share of traditional CDNs and cloud providers for their wider range of use cases and advanced capabilities. Businesses are improving their security posture, performance, and consumer experiences, while reducing overall costs from edge compute and AI capabilities, real-time responses, and intelligent migration of workloads.

Edgio is a global edge network with an integrated developer-friendly platform designed to offer the highest levels of performance and protection for digital content, boosting overall revenue and business value.

Digital Transformation