TechWave: A Gartner Podcast for IT Leaders

Our host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Tad Travis, chief of research for our applications leaders team. Travis shares how Gartner expert analysts are delivering research for all of these important areas.

Business-driven hyperautomation is a disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms. Its ubiquity is both a strength and a weakness. It’s a strength as it is applied to myriad business and IT processes in every business and IT function in the organization. Its weakness is that it requires disciplined and orchestrated strategic planning to architect, design and implement and, most of all, rigorous adaptive governance to sustain. 

Spending on hyperautomation initiatives is projected to be brisk and somewhat recession proof. By 2026, the market for software that enables hyperautomation will reach nearly $1.04 trillion from the 2021 totals that hovered at $591 billion. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 11.9% (see Forecast Analysis: Hyperautomation Enablement Software, Worldwide). 

Gartner also estimates that for every dollar of software spend, there is $4 to $12 that are spent on IT services. Examples of IT services include strategy, consulting, implementation and systems integration. Moreover, a large amount of this spend on software and services is siloed across an array of business functions. In that regard, Gartner has predicted that by 2024 a diffused (siloed) approach to hyperautomation initiatives will drive up initiative-specific total cost of ownership by fortyfold, making adaptive governance a differentiating factor in financial performance.

One of the many reasons for these large numbers and continued growth is that hyperautomation initiatives often have a broad spectrum of business outcomes and a very large and fragmented set of technology markets. In this podcast, our Gartner expert analysts share some trends and predictions regarding hyperautomation. 

Examples include:

• API-first world — There is a stealth and clear trajectory to an API-first approach as evidenced by RPA vendors increasingly investing in improving their API connectivity capabilities. Application portfolios are changing with more SaaS being adopted in portfolios, many of which have documented APIs. APIs are easier to secure and more stable to interact with than screen scraping techniques.
• Reduction in core need for screen scraping — The simplification, abundance and increased functionality of API access will reduce the core need for RPA screen scraping and task automation that initially thrust these product categories to the forefront.
• RPA vendor evolution — An overwhelming majority of RPA vendors offer automation via both API and UI integration. This means that organizations will scale their automation beyond screen scraping and complement offerings with APIs, robust workflows and process insights to achieve enterprise scale automation. This will set the stage for either convergence or consolidation of existing markets or some newly formed categories.

For additional insights and an early glimpse of Gartner’s hyperautomation predictions for 2023 — listen to our podcast.

In this podcast, our host Frances Karamouzis is joined by two Gartner expert analysts — Keith Guttridge and Saikat Ray. Both Guttridge and Ray are part of Gartner’s software engineering leaders research teams and speak to many clients working on hyperautomation initiatives. Both analysts are part of the authoring team for Magic Quadrants for Integration Platform as a Service and Robotic Process Automation, among several other publications.

Digital business will not happen without a digital platform with data and analytics (D&A) at the core. Technology can be a failure point when not handled correctly, but it is often not the biggest roadblock to progress. Digital business acceleration will depend equally, if not more, on how you organize D&A and the required roles, skills and culture to drive this transformation.

CEOs cite data and analytics as the top capability for enabling growth over the next two years.1 They also believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the technology most significantly impacting their industry over the next three years.1 As such, the role of the CDAO is growing in influence as organizations must transform data into business value. 

CDAO refers to the business leadership role that has the primary enterprise accountability for value creation by means of the organization’s D&A assets and ecosystem. Equivalent titles for portions of this responsibility are chief data officer, chief analytics officer, and chief/head of data and analytics, to name a few.

Gartner has been an early pioneer in this area. We are the only research firm around the world that recognized the role and its importance over eight years ago and launched the first comprehensive CDAO survey. We now boast the largest body of contiguous data about CDAOs and how they are growing, evolving and, most of all, adding value. If you are a CDAO and would like to participate in the study, here is the link: CDAO Survey.

Common Characteristics of CDAOs 

Gartner’s depth and breadth in the area of D&A and, more specifically, the large number of client inquiries and interactions with CDAOs have revealed that CDAOs have the following common characteristics: 

• Often new in their position. Most have been in their role for less than two years.
• Lack C-level experience and leadership skills,​ as they came from targeted D&A competency.
• Often appointed to a role without any specific or clearly defined measures for success. CDAOs struggle to showcase or articulate the value delivered. 
• Need guidance and measurement of effectiveness. They struggle to self-assess how effective they are in their role or determine team efficacy or efficiency.

Gartner CDAO Survey Insights 

The 2022 CDAO study shows that the most effective data and analytics leaders focus on creating business value, nurturing data and analytics talent, and changing culture. CDAOs must deliver tangible business outcomes for their organization and stakeholders as their life span in the role is highly correlated to these results. Leaders need to prove how D&A can improve business processes, lead to better decisions and support digital transformation.

Based on past survey results and Gartner’s interaction with clients, nearly 500 CDAOs highlighted the following roadblocks as inhibitors to their success:

• Skills and staff shortages
• Cultural challenges to accept change
• Lack of resources and funding to support the programs
• Lack of trust in data or data sources (internal and external)
• Lack of business stakeholder involvement and support
• Poor data literacy

Starting Point and Approach

Gartner research reveals that D&A leaders that are most successful tend to excel in four key areas: 

• Leadership
• Skills and culture
• Operational excellence 
• Demonstrating business outcomes

1 The 2022 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey was conducted to examine CEO and senior business executive views on current business issues, as well as some areas of technology agenda impact. The survey was conducted from July 2021 through December 2021, with questions about the period from 2021 through 2023. The research was collected via 382 online surveys and 28 telephone interviews. Survey results are published in 2022 CEO Survey — The Year Perspectives Changed.

Results of this survey do not represent global findings or the market as a whole, but reflect the sentiments of the respondents and companies surveyed.

In this podcast, our host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Carlie Idoine, chief of research for our data and analytics team, to share how Gartner expert analysts are delivering research for all of these important areas. 

Her experience includes design, implementation and communication of an enterprise analytics strategy and comprehensive analytics programs.

Cybersecurity permeates every single organization in the world, as a breach can impact your operations, delivery of your product or service, and your brand. As a result, CISOs and their teams are under pressure from many directions, requiring them to take a broader perspective than they did in the past. CISOs need both technical and business skills.

Cybersecurity importance and impact are so significant that it has become a common discussion topic for boards of directors (BoDs) across all industries. This is not surprising, as 88% of respondents to the 2022 Gartner View from the Board of Directors Survey1 now regard cybersecurity as a business risk, and not a technology problem. 

As a result of this trend, cybersecurity leaders, including chief information security officers, are increasingly being asked to present on a wide range of cybersecurity topics. These include:

• Daily cybersecurity needs — Providing an overview of the latest trends, threats or incidents that are prominent in the media or being discussed on other boards — for example, ransomware.
• Staying current — Every CISO must stay current on fast-changing cybersecurity news, manage effective incident response, adapt cybersecurity approaches to rapid changes, and influence and drive secure behaviors.
• Demonstrating value and proactively managing investments — A CISO must summarize how the cybersecurity team’s investments are delivering value to the organization. This requires defining cybersecurity metrics, securing a defensible budget, effectively partnering across the business, and improving individual and team effectiveness. Additionally, the CISO may need to raise the level of cybersecurity literacy for the board of directors and other leaders in the organization.
• Building and optimizing their cybersecurity program — This includes things such as defining their cybersecurity strategy, defining their cybersecurity architecture, building and maintaining teams. and managing risk. One staple of any cybersecurity program involves the assurance that the organization meets its compliance obligations.

1 The 2022 Gartner View From the Board of Directors Survey was conducted online from May through June 2021 among 273 respondents from the U.S., Europe and Asia/Pacific. Companies were screened to be midsize, large or global enterprises. Respondents were required to be a board director or a member of a corporate BoD. If respondents serve on multiple boards, they answered for the largest company, defined by its annual revenue, for which they are a board member. 

Disclaimer: Results of this survey do not represent global findings or the market as a whole, but reflect the sentiments of the respondents and companies surveyed.

In this podcast, our host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Mary Ruddy, chief of research for our security and risk management team, to share how Gartner expert analysts are delivering research for all of these important areas. Her primary research areas are security and identity architecture, and access management including customer IAM. Ruddy’s thought leadership includes recent contributions to Top Trends in Cybersecurity, Top Strategic Technology Trends, Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture, Identity Fabric, and Identity Threat Detection and Response.

According to Gartner’s 2022 CEO study, the workforce has become the third most important priority for CEOs in 2022 and 2023,1 making this a top issue for the highest-level executives of the enterprise. A number of these workforce issues are the great resignation, hybrid work and burnout. All of these are at the forefront of the VP of HR agenda. Gartner has extensive research addressing these topics (see recommended reading below).

However, the shift from the human capital function to CEO and boardroom conversations often has additional dimensions. Beyond attracting, acquiring, retaining and training talent, the collective delivery execution of remote, globally distributed personnel, workflows, processes, and enabling tools and technologies add to the complexity. This translates to productivity and utilization of personnel in pursuit of team-based synergistic collaboration. The collective impact on time (cycle time, elapsed time, reaction time), quality and risk is the boardroom conversation of “labor volatility.”

The biggest market implication is business disruption; specifically, the inability to:

Launch a new product or service

Deliver an existing product or service

Avoid significant delays that have a “material” financial impact

The term “material” is an accounting term that means significant financial consequence that must be explained on financial disclosures.

This podcast features a case study of global talent resilience to showcase the art of the possible for addressing labor volatility. The case study is about EPAM, which started in the U.S. in 1993 as a software engineering services company. The focus was to deliver application development and engineering services from Eastern Europe. Now, EPAM is a service provider that is a consulting firm, system integrator or managed services firm.

PAM had been consistently growing at a strong pace from its foray into the public market (2012 IPO). At the time, financial and industry analysts had identified one of its areas of vulnerability as its unusually high concentration (85%) of personnel in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Thus, EPAM’s leadership developed and began executing a multiyear plan to derisk by shifting talent across 50 countries around the world. The plan was moving forward with investments in highly distributed collaboration tools, client engagement and people platforms, and new agile development approaches targeted to multicultural and time-zone-agnostic work techniques.

Starting in 2014, a series of disruptive events occurred. There were significant geopolitical issues in Belarus, Crimea and other areas of importance to EPAM operations. This forced EPAM to accelerate its plan. Then, we were all impacted by the pandemic. Similar to many other companies, EPAM was navigating the complexities of the pandemic-mandated, almost instantaneous shift to fully remote operations.

hen EPAM entered the public markets in 2012, it had 8,000 employees, with 82% concentrated in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). By 2015, it lowered its concentration in CEE to 71%, having grown to 18,000 employees. There was continued progress over the years. In the second quarter of 2022, EPAM had 60,000 employees, with a concentration of 31% in Central Eastern Europe.

In this podcast, EPAM’s CEO Arkadiy Dobkin recounts how his team made the incredible shift of people and resources out of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to more than 12 other countries. From August 2020 through May 2022, EPAM shifted close to 10,000 employees from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to countries such as Poland, Georgia, Turkey, Lithuania and many others.

In summary, EPAM went from 85% of its people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in 2012, to 69% in 2015, to 31% in 2022. By any standard, this kind of people pivot is amazing and is a demonstrated example of global talent resiliency.

Our host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Arkadiy Dobkin. Dobkin is the CEO, president and chairman of the board at EPAM Systems, a leading digital transformation services and product engineering company.

Under his leadership, EPAM has grown from a New-Jersey-based startup with Eastern European roots to the foremost global digital transformation services provider — leading the industry in digital and physical product development and digital platform engineering services. Today, EPAM is a global enterprise and part of the S&P 500 Index.

The democratization of digital delivery means putting the responsibility, tools and accountability for building digital capabilities in the hands of not only IT departments but also other business units. The COVID-19 pandemic has given this trend renewed urgency as organizations have had to accelerate the digitalization of how they work and serve their customers remotely. Digitalization opportunities have seen dramatic growth, together with lower barriers to entry (for example, low-code development tools and artificial-intelligence-assisted development). These have enabled technology work that was once primarily the responsibility of dedicated IT teams to become “democratized.”

Gartner’s research reveals that business technologists (i.e., personnel reporting outside of IT) outstrip IT headcount by a factor of four to one. The increased number of business technologists highlights a significant shift in how enterprises manage their information technology estate.

CIOs and IT leaders must seize the moment to reimagine a technology operating model on an enterprise level (not just for the IT organization) to help the enterprise gain maximum advantage from its technology investments and its growing population of business technologists. Many of these business technologists are bringing new ways of working and being successful as part of the fusion teams that deliver in more agile ways.

To provide some context of these new ways of working, we highlight the definitions of fusion teams and business technologists:

• A fusion team is a multidisciplinary team that blends technology or analytics and business domain expertise, and shares accountability for business and technology outcomes. Instead of organizing work by functions or technologies, fusion teams are typically organized by the cross-cutting business capabilities, business outcomes or customer outcomes they support. 

A business technologist is an employee who reports outside of the IT department (centralized or business unit IT) and creates technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use. Business technologists can be individuals whose primary job entails technology work (such as Python developers hired in marketing, data scientists hired in finance, and accounting teams or software engineers hired in R&D). They can also be citizen technologists whose primary job is done through technology work (such as pricing managers building algorithms, customer service representatives building chatbots or doctors writing pandemic apps).

Host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Gartner expert analyst Jaime M. Capella. Capella is a Distinguished VP, Research, serving CIOs and other senior executives. His recent research collaborations look at the evolution of technology operating, funding and governance models to adopt Agile, incorporate product management principles and democratize digital delivery. 

The business value of artificial intelligence (AI) will reach $5.1 billion by 2025. Furthermore, 80% of executives think that automation can be applied to any decision. These impactful findings are among the many reasons that Gartner invests considerable resources to conduct an annual Artificial Intelligence Survey. Gartner’s annual survey is designed to understand the keys to successful AI implementations and the barriers to the operationalization of AI. The research was conducted online from October through December 2021 among 699 respondents from organizations in the U.S., Germany and the U.K. 

The results of the survey cut across four key themes:

• The Value of AI
• Operationalizing AI
• Talent
• Privacy, Security and Risk

For the first theme — the Value of AI — the data shows that organizations continue to increase their focus on measuring the value of their AI efforts. This zeal for value is driven by the fact that 40% of organizations have thousands or hundreds of thousands of AI models deployed. Furthermore, leading organizations expect to double the number of artificial intelligence projects in place. As such, there is a continued quest to more accurately measure value and showcase the benefits to leadership.

This leads us to the other themes. The survey data reveals that operationalization progress is slow; only 54% of AI models are fully deployed. Yet, the barriers are not talent-driven. Over 70% of organizations indicate AI talent is not a primary concern for staffing AI initiatives. Organizations report that they are able to retrain or upskill existing talent or acquire new talent to meet the need.

In this podcast, Gartner expert analyst Svetlana Sicular explores the first three themes, providing insights, examples and more data-driven findings from Gartner’s annual Artificial Intelligence Survey.

Our host Whit Andrews is joined by expert analyst, Svetlana Sicular. Sicular’s research interests center on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML); data-centric AI; and responsible AI and augmented intelligence.

Gartner defines business technologists as employees who report outside of IT departments (centralized or business unit IT) that create technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use. In the 2021 Gartner Reimagining Technology Work Survey, respondents indicated that, on average, business technologists make up 41% of their organization’s workforce. About 80% of these users are citizen technologists who create technology output as part of (or in addition to) their full-time roles. 

Business technologists and other citizen personas play a key role in automation, application development, data science and many other roles. These personas are often referred to as citizen developers, citizen designers, citizen integrators, citizen data scientists and many other roles with the prefix “citizen.” When these non-IT users have access to intuitive, self-service tools, they are empowered to independently build solutions for their business unit.

As low-code development technologies proliferate, more organizations are recognizing the value of empowering citizen technologists. These non-IT personas can independently use low-code and no-code technologies to improve business efficiency, efficacy and agility. Citizen technologists use a wide range of tools, and they need intuitive, flexible platforms to develop, automate and integrate their data, forms and workflows. In fact, citizen automation and development platforms (CADPs) have emerged as a new class of solutions that specifically target the needs of citizen technologists with an emphasis toward no-code builder experiences.

Our host Dixie John is joined by our expert analyst, Jason Wong. Wong is a distinguished VP analyst on the Software Design and Development team helping CIOs, and IT, application and software engineering leaders. Wong’s research focuses on enterprise strategies for “total experience,” low-code platforms, citizen development, mobile apps, progressive web apps and multiexperience development.

Worldwide, public cloud services are forecast to grow by 20.4% (22.0% in constant currency) in 2022. Organizations continue to accelerate cloud adoption, which is driving a five-year compound annual growth rate of 19.6% (19.4% in constant currency). The continued growth of cloud quite naturally leads to a discussion about some of the primary providers, often referred to in the market as the hyperscale vendors. Examples of hyperscale vendors include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Alibaba’s Alicloud. Others may also be considering services from Facebook or Apple.

A hyperscale vendor is a very large-scale cloud provider with global reach and impact. The potential for a hyperscale cloud provider’s failure is a classic high-impact/low-frequency risk. More specifically, “concentration” risk focuses on the level of dependency (reliance) an organization’s business, processes and data may lie with a specific vendor’s offerings and services. Understanding the scope and scale of cloud service provider failure is critical in order to take steps to manage risk.

Cloud services democratize access to resilience and redundancy capabilities previously only cost-effectively available to the largest enterprises. However, it is your responsibility to take advantage of these capabilities through resilient design that places the emphasis upon avoiding disasters rather than recovering from disasters. As organizations embrace cloud capabilities, the most effective teams strive to avoid service interruptions by creating systems that are highly available. This allows them to sidestep failures in underlying systems and continue operating with minimal impact to users, rather than recovering from an outage.

Traditional disaster recovery (DR) thinking is rooted in the failure of physical data centers. However, in public cloud infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS and PaaS), the failures with broad customer impact are rarely rooted in the data center issues. Rather, they are the result of software bugs that cause one or more cloud services to fail.

IT leaders should rethink traditional disaster recovery architectures in favor of more effective resiliency patterns — not only when deploying new applications in public cloud IaaS or PaaS, but also when migrating existing applications to public cloud environments.

Every year, Gartner shares the personal side of expert analysts in the form of their recommended reads (see Gartner’s 7 Must-Read Business Books for 2022). Each book on the list comes with a note from the expert highlighting its value to you as a leader and an individual. This month’s podcast features the book The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups by William J. Bernstein. The book was recommended by one of our data and analytics experts, Andrew White. The primary reason White recommended this book is that it goes totally against the popular image of the wisdom of crowds and explores counter arguments referred to as the delusions of crowds. Most importantly, the ideas are framed on the key challenges of executives and IT leaders for strategic decision making.

Gartner research highlights that decision making is a core capability for every organization, and it is becoming more complex. Decisions are becoming more connected, more contextual and more continuous. IT leaders must prepare to reengineer decision making and ultimately make business decision making a competitive differentiator.