Large global enterprises are moving “faster to the future” with an increased focus on technology investment to fuel growth through global expansion, according to a report from Expereo.
The research covered more than 650 CIOs in global enterprises across Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.
Results show that half of CIOs globally as well as in APAC (48%) have secured increased technology budgets specifically to deliver growth and overcome existing challenges.
This is positive news for a third (32%) in APAC who claim that their global business ambitions are constrained by legacy connectivity and management systems.
This also identifies that organisations may be missing growth opportunities by failing to prioritise regions with some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, due to perceived complexity and challenges to market entry.
Ben Elms, Chief Revenue Officer at Expereo, said that as organisations focus on driving growth through global expansion, there are clearly complexities and challenges to overcome.
“The business-critical nature of connectivity in today’s world combined with an increasingly complex landscape – from security, regulation, skills and often challenging physical and geo-political infrastructure — means it’s no easy task,” said Elms.
“However, it is achievable. Those who find a way to simplify, automate and scale their operations will be in the best position to reap the rewards and growth this can deliver,” he added.
Findings show that APAC CIOs are more optimistic (38%) when describing their organisations’ attitudes to growth — versus the global average of 34% — and more than a quarter (26%) as ambitious for the next 12 months. Almost half of APAC CIOs (48%) noted increased technology budgets to help drive this, just a few percentage points off the global average of 51%.
In the APAC markets surveyed, public/hybrid cloud (58%), security (57%), and automation and analytics (58%) were identified as the top three areas set for increased tech investments globally in the next four months.
These were closely followed by SASE (56%), WAN (54%), IoT (54%), SAAS (53%), as well as Edge computing and IoT (52% and 54% respectively).
APAC CIOs claim that this investment will drive global growth by ensuring prioritisation of increased innovation (50%), increased AI and automation (52%) and expansion into new markets (48%).
Almost half (44%) of APAC CIOs claimed that establishing and managing connectivity in new markets is the single most critical factor in ensuring successful global expansion, and 39% said that their board views global connectivity as a business asset critical to growth, but there are challenges that need to be overcome.
When asked specifically about the three top challenges to delivering global growth in new regions, APAC CIOs highlighted the ability to understand technology challenges at the board level (36%), having to deal with constraints due to legacy systems (36%), as well as having sufficiently in-depth knowledge of local customs and business practices (36%).
