CompTIA Research Finds New Challenges For IT Professionals In The Digital Age

By Ally Kutz, contributing writer

Job requirements and responsibilities for IT professionals are becoming more complicated as organizations become more digital, according to new research from CompTIA.

IT professionals are reevaluating their roles and reorganizing and prioritizing responsibilities thanks to the wide range of newer technology options available for organizations, states CompTIA’s Building Digital Organization report.

The report offers insights in five key sections, including Market Overview, Business Model Analysis, Challenges, Opportunities, and Qualitative Interviews.

The market overview includes cloud and mobility’s role in the new era of enterprise technology. Cloud and mobility, among other new technologies, account for almost all projected revenue growth in the IT industry; and the typical IT goal of building business systems is inevitably more difficult, thanks to all the technology options and more input being added by business units.

In the business model analysis, the report states respondents list IT as a primary driver in business decisions — with IT having a critical role in decisions for 80 percent of those surveyed.

As far as challenges go, the selection and implementation of technology with no IT function involvement is a huge concern. Regarding opportunities, businesses certainly see areas where IT is the primary owner in the organization. Businesses are also growing the roles of IT to include infrastructure, integration, intelligence, and innovation, with intelligence and innovation being more strategic paths for the IT function.

In the qualitative interviews portion of the report, there were seven key findings discovered by CompTIA:

• Corporate IT’s power and influence is growing with multiple business leaders, not solely IT, having a say in IT’s direction.
• IT’s transformation into an internal service provider is still growing and will require several more years to mature.
• The shift from capex to opex with steadily even out.
• The security conversation is extending from not only device protection, but to total data protection.
• Mobile conversation is extending to the Internet of Things.
• Big Data is on the radar, but data-driven decisions are very limited.
• Innovation cycles are getting shorter and shorter.

For more on the study, click here.