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IT Leaders Catalyze Growth Amid Uncertainty

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Sunday, 17 September 2023 01:27

September 18, 2023 – Organizations continue to balance their growth and transformation objectives against the impacts of economic uncertainty. For CIOs, that means their IT departments must improve application development maturity while increasing operating efficiencies.

Unfortunately, enterprises struggle with adopting the rapidly evolving technologies required to produce the digital experiences that stakeholders expect. As the demand for modern applications outstrips IT's delivery capacity, CIOs need to prioritize critical initiatives that allow them to meet their strategic goals.

With these principles in mind, The IT Media Group brought together 14 cross-industry IT executives for a virtual roundtable entitled "Catalyzing Growth Amid Uncertainty." The session uncovered the challenges and strategies that enable cloud-native digital transformation.

Jeff Ishii, Chief Technologist at The IT Media Group, moderated the roundtable. Also participating were executives from the session sponsors, Arctiq CEO Kam Sabouri, Harness' Canadian Country Manager Tim Brun and Field CTO Nick Durkin.

The interactive session included a combination of live polling and panel discussion about the challenges and best practices for the following topic areas:

1. Maturing development capability

• Areas of organizational pain
• Assessing maturity, security, and efficiency

2. Evolving the technical architecture

• Building blocks for modern application development
• Approaches for adding new capabilities

3. Increasing velocity while reducing costs

• Automating and orchestrating the SDLC
• Incorporating AI into development

4. Enterprise adoption strategies

• Enabling end-to-end visibility
• Implementing software delivery governance

The discussion identified how organizations continue to advance the automation of cloud-native development capabilities. Nick Durkin noted, “It was great to hear how participants wanted to use artificial intelligence to enhance their people’s jobs.” Durkin cautions organizations that automation isn’t solved for everyone yet and recommends that CIOs first understand what needs to be fixed and keep the end goal in mind. He added, “We deliver artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation to remove the worst part (of developer jobs), which allows organizations to optimize software delivery.”

Roundtable participants also discussed the need to remain relevant by being at the cutting edge of technology and drawing parallels with the business initiatives the technology supports. Tim Brun stated, “The ability to articulate value through defined metrics and KPIs will resonate with executive audiences.” Participants voiced their desire to modernize and automate processes to address velocity, governance, quality, reliability, and developer talent. Brun added, “We help organizations deliver those value drivers which allow them to be successful in their initiatives.”

The roundtable reinforced the relevance of DevOps as an enabler for modern application development. Kam Sabouri advised, “It’s important to understand all of the components of end-to-end automation of the SDLC.” Participants spoke about their goals of orchestrating observability, CI/CD, security, and policies across the DevOps spectrum. Sabouri pledged, “We can accelerate the journey to nirvana by many months because we have the blueprints, frameworks, and a track record of success with many organizations.”

All participants will receive a strategic insights report containing more than 85 tactics organizations use to address their challenges.

For more on how The IT Media Group fosters collaboration amongst the CIO community, please visit our events page. Interested parties can subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch a host of CIO roundtable highlights and executive interviews covering leadership, technology, and operations topics that address compelling issues.

The IT Media Group is an award-winning producer of events and content for senior IT executives. Based in Toronto, our leadership team includes some of the most experienced and well-respected media, technology, and business professionals serving the IT executive community.