MIddle Market CIOs Rate Top 10 IT Initiatives for 2012

When it comes to the top technology priorities of midsize enterprise CIOs, the key findings of our biannual survey might surprise you. Business intelligence ranks as their No. 1 issue followed by disaster recovery/business continuity. Clearly, the issues of better managing unstructured data and then protecting it are of paramount concern to middle market businesses that are growing.

CIOs have a laundry list of pressing issues and decisions to make on a daily basis, from technology deployments and innovations to line-of-business requests—all while answering the demands of their staff and partner networks. But just what are their highest priorities?

To answer that question, we surveyed our Midsize Enterprise Summit attendees to find out where these CIOs are planning to concentrate their efforts in the coming 12 months of 2012. What we found is presented here for the first time.

 The research is based on more than 200 CIOs who responded to an extensive survey at our September Midsize Enterprise Summit in Huntington Beach, Calif. The top five tech priorities included business intelligence, disaster recovery/business continuity, virtual desktop infrastructure, mobile computing and cloud.

It was no surprise that business intelligence (BI) was ranked the No. 1 IT initiative for the second consecutive year in a row. Many integrators and IT services firms have noticed the high demand of BI among the midmarket CIO audience and are focusing heavily on providing new BI solutions in the coming year. IBM is making a big bet on BI in 2012, especially with its Cognos software unit, which helps customers predict business outcomes and understand financial performance.

Disaster recovery is moving up the priority list fast and many attribute its rise to the natural disasters that were prevalent in 2011. “Our 2012 priority is going to be enabling disaster recovery, resilience or recoverability for our network. We are still deciding whether we are going to use it in the cloud or, perhaps, across our wide area network to another site, but that’s definitely our biggest project,” said John Buraczyk, Director of Information Technology at CF Jordan Construction.

VDI, which moved down one notch in the IT priority list since last year’s survey, still remains a leading initiative for middle market CIOs. “It seems like everybody wants to do VDI these days,” said Paul Harder, Director of Technology at Arc Greater Twin Cities.

In the age of the iPad, tablets and smartphones, CIOs must get in the mobility game and focus on implementing a mobile computing platform for their organizations. Mobile computing grasped fourth place in the top IT initiative rankings, and although most may feel that it should have been higher, it stands solid in the top five. “We plan to focus on mobile enablement for both the business and our end consumers,” said Bill Fellner, Enterprise Architect at Horace Mann. Agreeing with Fellner was Bob Keubler, CIO of The Flesh Co., who said, “In this upcoming year, our IT priority is mobility—how to implement it, where to implement it and why to implement it.”

Last, but not least, cloud computing completes the top five. “Our top 2012 IT initiative is to find the biggest, brightest, puffiest cloud in the sky—no rain, a little thunder is okay, but cloud is where it’s at,” quipped Joel Wolfe, Director of IT at J-W Admin Co. Cloud moved from the ninth spot to the fifth spot over the course of the year, which proves its continued influence among midmarket CIOs. Whether public or private cloud is the service of choice, CIOs still plan to embrace the cloud phenomenon in the coming year.

Rounding out the top 10 were storage, security, SharePoint, infrastructure upgrades and CRM.

TOP 10 Midmarket IT Initiatives (true order based on the survey results):  

1. BI

2. Disaster recovery/Business continuity

3. VDI

4. Mobility

5. Cloud

6. Storage

7. Security

8. SharePoint

9. Infrastructure Upgrades

10. CRM

Stay Classy, 

Mr. Midmarket

OSU Study: Middle Market Is Healthy, Resilient and Growing

The middle market has survived the recession and proves to be growing regardless of the current state of the U.S. economy. Today, one out of every four large enterprise businesses was a middle market business just five years ago. Their resilience and thriving nature is good news for CIOs, vendors and solution providers who cater to the middle market, as their growth will, indeed, require newer and more advanced IT services.

Ohio State University recently unveiled the results of the largest middle market study ever, as part of a collaboration between its Fisher College of Business and GE Capital. Nearly 1,500 C-level executives participated in the extensive survey, which revealed that 82 percent of midmarket organizations survived the recession—compared to a little more than half of small business. OSU researchers concluded: “The health of the middle market is vital to overall U.S. prosperity.”

Despite the success of the middle market, it is largely ignored, said Anil Makhija, professor of finance in the Fisher College of Business at OSU. Makhija is the driving force behind Fisher College’s Middle Market Center. The survey results will be presented during a keynote address at MES East in New Orleans from April 29 to May 2. 

The survey painted a rosy picture for midsize enterprises as 80 percent of midmarket businesses expect to grow over the next 12 months. This is good news for the majority of midmarket CIOs, who may be saved from having to drastically cut back on their IT budgets to help their organizations grow.

OSU’s study also explored companies it classified as  “growth champions,” which represented about one-tenth of the overall market. These companies had some characteristics that pointed to their use of new technology and IT implementations. “We found that these growth champions were investing more in R&D, which also points to an interest in new technologies,” said Makhija.

So, what’s the secret sauce that’s making these already flourishing, midmarket firms so successful in the current turmoil that is our economy?  Compared with slower-growing firms, growth champions had better customer service, invested in innovation, have a broader geographic vision, maintained better management control systems and have better talent management.

The characteristics, specifically innovation investment in regard to IT, distinguish the growth champions from their peers. CIOs in this space are highly interdependent on each other and could learn a few things from these growth champions.

Click HERE to see the OSU middle market study data presentation.

Stay classy,

Mr. Midmarket