Report: Digital Technologies Focus of IT Departments in 2013

Mobile, big data, social, cloud computing-these aren't exactly new buzzwords in IT, but they are more relevant than ever, according to 2,000 CIOs who participated in a survey about 2013 IT budgets and priorities from Gartner, Inc., an IT research and consulting company. The survey results released Wednesday indicate that IT strategies are increasingly centered on digital technologies, causing CIOs to evolve their priorities despite seeing budgets remain flat (and even slightly down) from 2012.

"Digital technologies provide a platform to achieve results, but only if CIOs adopt new roles and behaviors to find digital value," said Mark McDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "CIOs require a new agenda that incorporates hunting for new digital innovations and opportunities, and harvesting value from products, services and operations."

The report broke down the top 10 technology and business priorities for 2013, which further shows a move away from focusing on traditional IT operations:

Top 10 Technology Priorities:

1. Analytics and business intelligence
2. Mobile technologies
3. Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS)
4. Collaboration technologies (workflow)
5. Legacy modernization
6. IT management
7. CRM
8. Virtualization
9. Security
10. ERP Applications

Top 10 Business Priorities:

1. Increasing enterprise growth
2. Delivering operational results
3. Reducing enterprise costs
4. Attracting and retaining new customers
5. Improving IT applications and infrastructure
6. Creating new products and services (innovation)
7. Improving efficiency
8. Attracting and retaining the workforce
9. Implementing analytics and big data
10. Expanding into new markets and geographies

The survey also asked which digital technology would be most disruptive to the current workflow, and 70 percent of CIOs said mobile, followed by big data analytics.

For current and aspiring IT pros, knowing which areas in the field are growing can help them stay on top of the skills they need to remain competitive. We recently wrote, for instance, about how big data analytics is expected to create 4.4 million jobs in the next three years and listed the 10 top IT skills to have for 2013, many of which mirror the priorities from the survey. In the Gartner report, CIOs expect digital technology to continue to make a significant impact over at least the next 10 years.

To view the full report, visit Gartner.com.