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Top CIO Challenges: IT Complexity and Managing IT Performance

Digital transformation, migration to the enterprise cloud and increasing customer demands are creating a surge in IT complexity and the associated costs of managing it. Technical leaders around the world are concerned about the effect this has on IT performance and ultimately, their business according to a new report from Dynatrace, based on an independent global survey of 800 CIOs, Top Challenges for CIOs in a Software-Driven, Hybrid, Multi-Cloud World.

CIO responses to the survey indicate that lost revenue (49%) and reputational damage (52%) are among the biggest concerns as businesses transform into software businesses and move to the cloud.

And, as CIOs struggle to prevent these concerns from becoming reality, IT teams now spend 33% of their time dealing with digital performance problems, costing businesses an average of $3.3 million annually, compared to $2.5 million in 2018; an increase of 34%. To combat this, 88% of CIOs say AI will be critical to IT’s ability to master increasing complexity.

Software is Transforming Every Business

Every company, in every industry, is transforming into a software business. The way enterprises interact with customers, assure quality experiences and optimize revenues is driven by applications and the hybrid, multi-cloud environments underpinning them. Success or failure comes down to the software supporting these efforts. The pressure of this "run-the-business" software performing properly has significant ramifications for IT professionals.

According to the survey:

■ 44% of CIOs fear there could be a threat to the existence of their business if they are unable to manage IT performance.

■ As complexity continues to grow, 74% of CIOs say it could soon become extremely difficult to manage performance efficiently.


Enterprise "Cloud-First" Strategies Increase Complexity

Underpinning this software revolution is the enterprise cloud, allowing companies to innovate faster and better meet the needs of customers. The enterprise cloud is dynamic, hybrid, multi-cloud, and web-scale, containing hundreds of technologies, millions of lines of code and billions of dependencies. However, this transformation isn’t simply about lifting and shifting apps to the cloud, it’s a fundamental shift in how applications are built, deployed and operated.

According to the survey:

■ The majority of CIOs are already using or are planning to deploy microservices (88%), containers (86%), serverless computing (85%), PaaS (89%), SaaS (94%), IaaS (91%) and private cloud (95%) in the next 12 months.

■ The average mobile or web application transaction crosses 37 different technology systems or components. This brings an inherent increase in IT complexity, making it harder for organizations to manage performance.

The Age of the Customer Increases Pressure to Deliver Great Experiences

We are squarely in the age of the customer, where high quality service is paramount due to the ease with which customers will try competitive offerings and share their experiences instantly via social media.

The research highlights the extent to which businesses are struggling to combat IT complexity that threatens the customer experience, with CIOs revealing: on average, organizations have suffered 6 IT outages where user-experiences, business revenues or operations were impacted in the last 12 months.

IT Teams Are Feeling the Strain

Digital transformation, migration to the enterprise cloud and increasing customer demands are collectively putting pressure on IT teams, who continue to feel the strain, especially as it relates to performance. Revealing the extent of this dilemma, key findings of the research also show that:

■ More than three quarters of CIOs (76%) say they don’t have complete visibility into application performance in cloud-native architectures.

■ 78% of CIOs are frustrated that so much time is spent setting up monitoring for different cloud environments when deploying new services.

■ IT teams now spend around 33% of their time tackling performance problems.


Exploring the potential antidote to these challenges, the research further reveals that 88% of CIOs say that they believe AI will be critical to IT’s ability to master increasing complexity.

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Many organizations describe AI as strategic, but they do not manage it strategically. When AI plans are disconnected from strategy, detached from organizational learning, and protected from serious assumptions testing, the problem is no longer technical immaturity; it is a failure of management discipline ... Executives too often tell organizations to "use AI" before they define what AI is supposed to change. The problem deepens in organizations where strategy isn't well articulated in the first place ...

Across the enterprise technology landscape, a quiet crisis is playing out. Organizations have run hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generative AI pilots. Leadership has celebrated the proof of concept (POCs) ... Industry experience points to a sobering reality: only 5-10% of AI POCs that progress to the pilot stage successfully reach scaled production. The remaining 90% fail because the enterprise environment around them was never ready to absorb them, not the AI models ...

Today's modern systems are not what they once were. Organizations now rely on distributed systems, event-driven workflows, hybrid and multi-cloud environments and continuous delivery pipelines. While each adds flexibility, it also introduces new, often invisible failures. Development speed is no longer the primary bottleneck of innovation. Reliability is ...

Seeing is believing, or in this case, seeing is understanding, according to New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast for Retail and eCommerce report. Retailers who want to provide exceptional customer experiences while improving IT operations efficiency are leaning on observability ... Here are five key takeaways from the report ...

Technology leaders across the federal landscape are facing, and will continue to face, an uphill battle when it comes to fortifying their digital environments against hostile and persistent threat actors. On one hand, they are being asked to push digital transformation ... On the other hand, they are facing the fiscal uncertainty of continuing resolutions (CR) and government shutdowns looming near and far. In the face of these challenges, CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs must figure out how to modernize legacy systems and infrastructure while doing more with less and still defending against external and internal threats ...

Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

Top CIO Challenges: IT Complexity and Managing IT Performance

Digital transformation, migration to the enterprise cloud and increasing customer demands are creating a surge in IT complexity and the associated costs of managing it. Technical leaders around the world are concerned about the effect this has on IT performance and ultimately, their business according to a new report from Dynatrace, based on an independent global survey of 800 CIOs, Top Challenges for CIOs in a Software-Driven, Hybrid, Multi-Cloud World.

CIO responses to the survey indicate that lost revenue (49%) and reputational damage (52%) are among the biggest concerns as businesses transform into software businesses and move to the cloud.

And, as CIOs struggle to prevent these concerns from becoming reality, IT teams now spend 33% of their time dealing with digital performance problems, costing businesses an average of $3.3 million annually, compared to $2.5 million in 2018; an increase of 34%. To combat this, 88% of CIOs say AI will be critical to IT’s ability to master increasing complexity.

Software is Transforming Every Business

Every company, in every industry, is transforming into a software business. The way enterprises interact with customers, assure quality experiences and optimize revenues is driven by applications and the hybrid, multi-cloud environments underpinning them. Success or failure comes down to the software supporting these efforts. The pressure of this "run-the-business" software performing properly has significant ramifications for IT professionals.

According to the survey:

■ 44% of CIOs fear there could be a threat to the existence of their business if they are unable to manage IT performance.

■ As complexity continues to grow, 74% of CIOs say it could soon become extremely difficult to manage performance efficiently.


Enterprise "Cloud-First" Strategies Increase Complexity

Underpinning this software revolution is the enterprise cloud, allowing companies to innovate faster and better meet the needs of customers. The enterprise cloud is dynamic, hybrid, multi-cloud, and web-scale, containing hundreds of technologies, millions of lines of code and billions of dependencies. However, this transformation isn’t simply about lifting and shifting apps to the cloud, it’s a fundamental shift in how applications are built, deployed and operated.

According to the survey:

■ The majority of CIOs are already using or are planning to deploy microservices (88%), containers (86%), serverless computing (85%), PaaS (89%), SaaS (94%), IaaS (91%) and private cloud (95%) in the next 12 months.

■ The average mobile or web application transaction crosses 37 different technology systems or components. This brings an inherent increase in IT complexity, making it harder for organizations to manage performance.

The Age of the Customer Increases Pressure to Deliver Great Experiences

We are squarely in the age of the customer, where high quality service is paramount due to the ease with which customers will try competitive offerings and share their experiences instantly via social media.

The research highlights the extent to which businesses are struggling to combat IT complexity that threatens the customer experience, with CIOs revealing: on average, organizations have suffered 6 IT outages where user-experiences, business revenues or operations were impacted in the last 12 months.

IT Teams Are Feeling the Strain

Digital transformation, migration to the enterprise cloud and increasing customer demands are collectively putting pressure on IT teams, who continue to feel the strain, especially as it relates to performance. Revealing the extent of this dilemma, key findings of the research also show that:

■ More than three quarters of CIOs (76%) say they don’t have complete visibility into application performance in cloud-native architectures.

■ 78% of CIOs are frustrated that so much time is spent setting up monitoring for different cloud environments when deploying new services.

■ IT teams now spend around 33% of their time tackling performance problems.


Exploring the potential antidote to these challenges, the research further reveals that 88% of CIOs say that they believe AI will be critical to IT’s ability to master increasing complexity.

The Latest

Many organizations describe AI as strategic, but they do not manage it strategically. When AI plans are disconnected from strategy, detached from organizational learning, and protected from serious assumptions testing, the problem is no longer technical immaturity; it is a failure of management discipline ... Executives too often tell organizations to "use AI" before they define what AI is supposed to change. The problem deepens in organizations where strategy isn't well articulated in the first place ...

Across the enterprise technology landscape, a quiet crisis is playing out. Organizations have run hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generative AI pilots. Leadership has celebrated the proof of concept (POCs) ... Industry experience points to a sobering reality: only 5-10% of AI POCs that progress to the pilot stage successfully reach scaled production. The remaining 90% fail because the enterprise environment around them was never ready to absorb them, not the AI models ...

Today's modern systems are not what they once were. Organizations now rely on distributed systems, event-driven workflows, hybrid and multi-cloud environments and continuous delivery pipelines. While each adds flexibility, it also introduces new, often invisible failures. Development speed is no longer the primary bottleneck of innovation. Reliability is ...

Seeing is believing, or in this case, seeing is understanding, according to New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast for Retail and eCommerce report. Retailers who want to provide exceptional customer experiences while improving IT operations efficiency are leaning on observability ... Here are five key takeaways from the report ...

Technology leaders across the federal landscape are facing, and will continue to face, an uphill battle when it comes to fortifying their digital environments against hostile and persistent threat actors. On one hand, they are being asked to push digital transformation ... On the other hand, they are facing the fiscal uncertainty of continuing resolutions (CR) and government shutdowns looming near and far. In the face of these challenges, CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs must figure out how to modernize legacy systems and infrastructure while doing more with less and still defending against external and internal threats ...

Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...