Lenovo and AMD jointly introduce CIO Technology Playbook 2023

Lenovo and AMD cooperatively launched CIO Technology Playbook 2023, which aims to highlight the opportunities, challenges, and considerations for CIOs in today’s data-driven economy to help them make the right IT investments.

The CIO Technology playbook is a study of over 900 CIOs & IT decision-makers in Asia Pacific (AP). The results observed show concerns among CIOs around macroeconomic factors affecting business growth in 2023 and early 2024. For CIOs in India 'high energy prices’ is the topmost concern in 2023; followed by 'high inflation’ and 'growing geopolitical tensions’ as the other key challenge areas.

Amit Luthra, Managing Director, India, Lenovo ISG said, “With the rise of digital capabilities, businesses are leaning towards data-driven innovation to drive effective business decisions. This means staying on top of rapid innovations in Cloud, Edge, AI/ML that must meet the existing infrastructure with as-a-service offerings. CIOs today have a bigger role to play. We are certain that the CIO Technology Playbook will act as the guide for the CIOs to plan and transform their IT. Covering the Asia Pacific geography, the report notes that organizations in India are at the forefront of leveraging new technologies such as edge innovation with more than 97% of the organisations in India already using or intending to use Edge Computing for their business operations. With such insights and data presented in this report, we hope to inspire and inform Indian businesses as they navigate the rapidly changing and competitive landscape. This report underscores our commitment to leveraging data and innovation to create a better future for all.”

Vinay Sinha, Managing Director, AMD India said, “As the digital landscape evolves, it’s crucial for organizations to transform their digital infrastructure. Transforming digital infrastructure is a complex process that requires addressing a range of key challenges and spending imperatives. AMD’s high performance and adaptive computing solutions have played a key role in the transformation process of organizations and we look forward to tackling future challenges with CIOs and business leaders. The “CIO Technology Playbook 2023” will act as a comprehensive guide to address key issues such as maximizing existing investments, addressing security and compliance concerns, and ensuring scalability and reliability of the digital infrastructure. By having a clear, actionable plan in place, CIOs and business leaders can make informed decisions, drive innovation, and enhance the customer experience.”

The study tells that the IT decision-makers are actively looking to improve technology for optimizing their supply chains and enhance asset utilization, agility, and resilience, enabling them to respond faster to the changing needs of the business.

Digital Infrastructure to Significantly Drive Business ROI

85% of Asia Pacific organizations agree that digital infrastructure is essential to achieve business goals. With the advent of multi-clouds and rapidly expanding edge infrastructure CIOs are highly concerned about the growing IT operational complexity and increasing demand for faster response to their ever-changing and evolving business requirements. Digital infrastructure can help businesses automate tasks, streamline processes, and improve productivity.

Increased Focus on Hybrid/Multi-Cloud for Cloud/Modernized Mission-Critical Workloads

Security concerns have urged 63% of Asia Pacific organizations to repatriate workloads back from public cloud to private cloud and/or traditional data centers in the last 12 months. Mission-critical applications running in the public cloud in Japan will increase by less than 1 point to 19% this year; compared with the rest of AP markets where it will see a 2% decline. Hybrid or multi-cloud is poised to gain prominence in Asia over the next 2 to 3 years.It offers highest levels of performance and meets data security and compliance requirements. AP businesses will continue to run more than 50% of mission-critical workloads on traditional data center infrastructure, systems and platforms, and private cloud infrastructure.

Growing Awareness and Adoption of As-a-Service Flexible Models

India takes the lead and proved to be the most aware market in Asia Pacific while Korea and Japan which are more technology savvy have a relatively lower awareness level. Keeping up with the highly volatile and economic environment, organizations in AP stated cost rationalization and optimization as the key drivers of As-a-Service infrastructure. Consumption-based infrastructure offers flexibility and agility, helping CIOs ease financial burdens and invest more in business innovation.

Unified Data Management Means Improved Innovation

Efficient data management requires seamless mobility of data in a highly secure manner across the different deployment locations. While there is growing application interdependencies, only 8% businesses are using a single data management platform. Currently, more than 78% of businesses are using multiple data management platforms and systems.

Single unified data management platforms offer seamless data mobility across multiple clouds and integrating data across containers and at the edge. CIOs investing in the right platforms and technologies to manage the data explosion at the edge will be in strong stead to build market leadership.

Enhancing customer experience a priority for CIOs

Businesses across verticals such as manufacturing, retail, logistics, transportation, and energy are increasingly focused on delivering a superior customer experience to drive success in the digital economy.

Organizations are expected to use AI-powered applications for a broad array of business use cases and functions across vertical industries. On the contrary, while Japan is a digitally mature market, fewer organizations (74%) surveyed stated that they are using or planning to use AI applications compared to the Asia/Pacific average.

Edge innovation will be the next frontier in the DX journey:

88% of the organizations in Asia are either using or planning to use edge computing in the next 12 months for business operations. Through edge, businesses can improve optimal utilization of assets and enhance overall customer experience while ensuring higher uptime or improved reliability.

The survey was conducted across 12 key markets in Asia - India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Philippines.