Gartner: Only 48% of Digital Initiatives Meet or Exceed Their Business Outcome Targets

On average, only 48% of digital initiatives enterprise-wide meet or exceed their business outcome targets according to Gartner, Inc.'s annual global survey of more than 3,100 CIOs and technology executives, and more than 1,100 executive leaders outside of IT (CxOs).

A small cohort of CIOs and CxOs, known as the "Digital Vanguard," has the highest achievement rate, where 71% of their digital initiatives meet or exceed outcome targets.

"This digital vanguard distinguishes themselves from the rest of CIOs and CxOs because they co-own digital delivery," said Raf Gelders, VP, Research at Gartner. "CIOs and CxOs are equally responsible, accountable and involved in delivering the digital solutions their enterprises need. This is a radical departure from the traditional paradigm of IT delivery and business 'project sponsorship' that predominates in most enterprises."

Digital vanguard CxOs distinguish themselves from other CxOs because they dedicate more of their personal time and resources to digital delivery. They co-own digital delivery end to end with their CIOs, as well as dedicate 35% of their business area staff to do technology work (vs 21% of the rest of CxOs). They also work very closely with IT, meeting with their CIOs four times more often than the rest of CxOs.

"Behind every digital vanguard CxO, a digital vanguard CIO is guiding and enabling CxOs and their teams to co-lead and co-build digital delivery with IT," said Jaime Capella, Distinguished VP, Research at Gartner. "Digital vanguard CIOs nurture their peers to become digital vanguard CxOs. Those CIOs make it easier for their CxOs to lead digital with them and for business area staff to build digital solutions together with IT.

"CIOs' success now depends on their CxOs' success," continued Capella. "To succeed at the next phase of digital initiatives, CIOs need their CxOs to work together and co-lead with them. So their fortunes are intertwined: one cannot succeed without the other."

CIOs Seek Compelling, Easy-to-Use Platforms for All Technologists

Over 80% of CIOs polled in the survey said they expect to increase their investments in 2025 in strong foundational capabilities and technologies such as cybersecurity, AI/GenAI, business intelligence and data analytics, or integration technologies/APIs.

"Digital vanguard CIOs do not invest in these technologies to be used by their IT staff only. They also make them easy to use for potential or actual technologists outside of IT," said Gelders. "On average, there is 26% of business/corporate area staff outside of IT dedicated to building, implementing or managing technology. Many of these technologies naturally lend themselves to easing the burden of work enterprise-wide, accelerating time-to-market and time-to-value, and fostering the accountability of CxOs."

At the other end of the spectrum, 43% of CIOs said they expect to decrease their investment in legacy infrastructure and data center technologies. This is a trend that has become more common in recent years, mainly due to migrating to cloud-based solutions. That compares with 33% who said they expect to increase it, which can be attributed, in part, to those organizations that acquired on-premise infrastructure to experiment and produce GenAI solutions.

CIOs Look to Develop Tech and Digital Leadership Skills for All Technologists Across the Enterprise

Only 16% of CIOs surveyed prioritize building a technology workforce enterprise-wide (beyond their own IT departments) in 2025. That will limit the enterprise's ability to get the most from their digital investments. It condemns them to perpetuate the low number (48%) of digital initiatives that meet or exceed their business outcome targets.

Furthermore, just 18% of CIOs said they will prioritize sharing technology leadership with other business areas, a paramount must-have to grow the digital vanguard.

"Digital vanguard CIOs plan the needs of digital skills not just for IT staff but also for all potential and actual technologists across the enterprise," said Gelders.

Two-thirds of digital vanguard CIOs (vs 22% of the rest of CIOs) go beyond that and help business areas forecast their own needs of digital skills among business staff.

Methodology: The 2025 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 3,186 CIOs and technology executives in 88 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $17.6 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $351 billion in IT spending. This survey was supplemented with insights from 1,126 executive leaders outside of IT (CXOs).

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Gartner: Only 48% of Digital Initiatives Meet or Exceed Their Business Outcome Targets

On average, only 48% of digital initiatives enterprise-wide meet or exceed their business outcome targets according to Gartner, Inc.'s annual global survey of more than 3,100 CIOs and technology executives, and more than 1,100 executive leaders outside of IT (CxOs).

A small cohort of CIOs and CxOs, known as the "Digital Vanguard," has the highest achievement rate, where 71% of their digital initiatives meet or exceed outcome targets.

"This digital vanguard distinguishes themselves from the rest of CIOs and CxOs because they co-own digital delivery," said Raf Gelders, VP, Research at Gartner. "CIOs and CxOs are equally responsible, accountable and involved in delivering the digital solutions their enterprises need. This is a radical departure from the traditional paradigm of IT delivery and business 'project sponsorship' that predominates in most enterprises."

Digital vanguard CxOs distinguish themselves from other CxOs because they dedicate more of their personal time and resources to digital delivery. They co-own digital delivery end to end with their CIOs, as well as dedicate 35% of their business area staff to do technology work (vs 21% of the rest of CxOs). They also work very closely with IT, meeting with their CIOs four times more often than the rest of CxOs.

"Behind every digital vanguard CxO, a digital vanguard CIO is guiding and enabling CxOs and their teams to co-lead and co-build digital delivery with IT," said Jaime Capella, Distinguished VP, Research at Gartner. "Digital vanguard CIOs nurture their peers to become digital vanguard CxOs. Those CIOs make it easier for their CxOs to lead digital with them and for business area staff to build digital solutions together with IT.

"CIOs' success now depends on their CxOs' success," continued Capella. "To succeed at the next phase of digital initiatives, CIOs need their CxOs to work together and co-lead with them. So their fortunes are intertwined: one cannot succeed without the other."

CIOs Seek Compelling, Easy-to-Use Platforms for All Technologists

Over 80% of CIOs polled in the survey said they expect to increase their investments in 2025 in strong foundational capabilities and technologies such as cybersecurity, AI/GenAI, business intelligence and data analytics, or integration technologies/APIs.

"Digital vanguard CIOs do not invest in these technologies to be used by their IT staff only. They also make them easy to use for potential or actual technologists outside of IT," said Gelders. "On average, there is 26% of business/corporate area staff outside of IT dedicated to building, implementing or managing technology. Many of these technologies naturally lend themselves to easing the burden of work enterprise-wide, accelerating time-to-market and time-to-value, and fostering the accountability of CxOs."

At the other end of the spectrum, 43% of CIOs said they expect to decrease their investment in legacy infrastructure and data center technologies. This is a trend that has become more common in recent years, mainly due to migrating to cloud-based solutions. That compares with 33% who said they expect to increase it, which can be attributed, in part, to those organizations that acquired on-premise infrastructure to experiment and produce GenAI solutions.

CIOs Look to Develop Tech and Digital Leadership Skills for All Technologists Across the Enterprise

Only 16% of CIOs surveyed prioritize building a technology workforce enterprise-wide (beyond their own IT departments) in 2025. That will limit the enterprise's ability to get the most from their digital investments. It condemns them to perpetuate the low number (48%) of digital initiatives that meet or exceed their business outcome targets.

Furthermore, just 18% of CIOs said they will prioritize sharing technology leadership with other business areas, a paramount must-have to grow the digital vanguard.

"Digital vanguard CIOs plan the needs of digital skills not just for IT staff but also for all potential and actual technologists across the enterprise," said Gelders.

Two-thirds of digital vanguard CIOs (vs 22% of the rest of CIOs) go beyond that and help business areas forecast their own needs of digital skills among business staff.

Methodology: The 2025 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 3,186 CIOs and technology executives in 88 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $17.6 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $351 billion in IT spending. This survey was supplemented with insights from 1,126 executive leaders outside of IT (CXOs).

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Ask most IT leaders about their biggest concern with AI and you'll hear the same answer: hallucinations ... Today, however, the conversation has shifted ... As organizations move beyond chatbots and experiments, they are increasingly deploying AI agents that perform multi-step tasks. These systems retrieve documents, query databases, call APIs, generate reports, write code, and make recommendations. The issue is not whether the model can reason. The issue is whether the organization can see, verify, and govern the decisions being made along the way ...

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While organizations want to take control of their telemetry, building telemetry pipelines from scratch can be a very daunting, complicated task, even when leveraging open-source standards like OpenTelemetry. It requires specialized knowledge across distributed systems, data engineering, and security. This fragmented approach across systems causes higher operational costs; it puts a strain on resources and reduces efficiency as teams have to work with different interfaces and processes ...

The Corporate Network Is Fading - Here's What Replaces It

For decades, enterprise networks were designed around a simple assumption: work happened inside the office. Applications lived in centralized data centers, employees connected through internal infrastructure, and security focused on protecting the perimeter that surrounded everything ... But the way organizations operate today bears little resemblance to that environment. Cloud platforms host critical applications, employees connect from homes and airports as often as they do from offices, and partners collaborate through shared systems that exist far beyond corporate walls. In short, the corporate network no longer resembles the environment it was designed to protect ...

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Enterprises operate different combinations of workloads across cloud, hybrid and multicloud environments. For business-critical workloads, teams need to consider monitoring and observability early so they can detect health issues, investigate failures, and understand operational impact. Organizations place workloads on cloud platforms based on a combination of technical requirements, economics, existing dependencies, organizational standards, and business priorities. Their monitoring priorities therefore depend on what they operate and where those systems run. Those priorities will not look the same for every organization ...

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Top-performing businesses prioritize data-driven decision making, enabling leaders to move from intuition and gut feel towards evidence-based judgment. But that judgment is only sound when the data underpinning decisions is accurate. With incident management, data accuracy is particularly important. Long-term revenue, customer trust, and operational stability depend on high-quality data that enables teams to quickly identify and address the root cause of major incidents. Against this backdrop, governance becomes a critical endeavor to ensure the right data drives the right action ...

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