While there were more than 100 key observations from the recent Gartner® IT Symposium/Xpo™s held in Australia and the United States, 8x8 executives and staff curated ten top takeaways that will be of interest to every CIO and IT leader.

We hope you’ll use and come back to these takeaways as an informational and planning resource. If you’d like to learn more about how 8x8, a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (and also recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as Service), can help IT leaders navigate today’s trends and challenges, we welcome your interest and conversation.

Here are 10 key takeaways from Gartner’s 2022 IT Symposium/Xpo:

1. CIOs are leading in a post-pandemic world that is deglobalizing, economically disrupted, and facing a greater range of threats than ever before. In Gartner’s opening keynote titled “Make the Difference,” the analyst firm’s distinguished vice presidents noted IT leaders are at the epicenter of the enterprise brand, its talent strategy and its corporate culture. They advised IT leaders must focus on three strategies: revolutionary work, responsible investment, and resilient cybersecurity.

See the five traits Gartner believes CIOs must possess to lead and deliver on digital transformation.

2. Gartner’s top strategic technology trends for 2023 include industry cloud platforms, digital immunity, applied observability, superapps, and adaptive AI. Notes the analyst firm, the future is always uncertain, but uncertainty brings opportunity, and now is the time to seize opportunities.

View Gartner’s top strategic technology trends for 2023.

3. In the session "The New Value Proposition for the Role of the CIO," Gartner noted that leading CIOs are changing how they create and deliver value as a member of the C-suite. Gartner predicts that through 2027, CIOs who implement seven rules will be 75% more successful in elevating their strategic contribution.

See Gartner’s seven rules for demonstrating the business value of IT.

4. Midsize enterprise (MSE) CIOs are shifting investments and even increasing budgets right now to fund top technology priorities, including cloud migration. The accelerated rate of digital-first change is forcing leaders to operationalize investments faster to deliver time to value, says Gartner VP Mike Cisek.

Read more on top technology priorities for midsize enterprise CIOs.

5. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of CEOs will mandate a culture of organizational resilience to survive coinciding threats from cybercrime, severe weather events, civil unrest, and political instabilities. Business resilience and the role of the IT executive was a key focus in Gartner’s Top Predictions for Cybersecurity 2022-2023. These predictions include that executive performance evaluations will be increasingly linked to the ability to manage cyber risk.

View all of Gartner’s top predictions for cybersecurity.

6. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 50% of IT organizations will have established a digital employee experience strategy, team, and management tool. The analyst firm notes IT must take the friction out of work today to reduce employee fatigue, and increase intent to stay and performance. Gartner also predicts that organizations that communicate and deliver a differentiated employee value proposition (EVP) will reduce the compensation premium needed to hire by 50%, improve new hire commitment by 29%, and decrease annual employee turnover by 69%.

Get more direction from Gartner analysts.

7. When organizations have high digital dexterity, the likelihood of successful digital transformation increases by 3.3 times. “As a CIO, you can take an active role in developing digital dexterity in your enterprise leaders,” notes Neil Osmond. The key to this initiative, he says, is shifting the focus from education to enablement.

Read more on accelerating understanding around digital opportunity.

8. IT has taken a more active role in customer experience (CX), and is now involved in two-thirds of all CX projects, up from less than one-half in 2017. CIOs and IT directors should lead in making sure total experience (TX), which holistically encompasses multiexperience, user experience, customer experience, and employee experience, is taken into account. Gartner predicts that by 2024, organizations providing a total experience will outperform competitors by 25% in satisfaction metrics for both CX and EX.

See how 8x8, with its platform approach, supports total experience.

9. Cloud computing is evolving from a technology enabler to a business disruptor. “Technology and service providers that fail to adapt to the pace of cloud shift face increasing risk of becoming obsolete or, at best, being relegated to low-growth markets,” warns Gartner research vice president Michael Warrilow.

Read how 8x8 customers are future-proofing their business through cloud communications.

10. The cost of doing nothing right now in terms of further cloud investment is high. “Organizations that do not invest in the short term will likely fall behind in the medium term and risk not being around in the long term,” notes Gartner. In 8x8’s speaking session at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpos in Australia, the United States, and Spain, we highlighted not only the cost of doing nothing, but the benefits of investing in new or improved cloud solutions.

Check out our Real Costs of Doing Nothing ebook, or hear the cloud transformation story of our customer speaker at the event, Chris Geryol, IT Infrastructure and Operations Leader at nVent.

If your organization is looking to move your business communications to the cloud or improve your business communications in the cloud, 8x8 can help. Contact us. ->