AI and digital in business life 2024

For the first time in the history of this piece of BCS research there has been a big change in the concerns of IT leaders and IT professionals.

BCS has reported on future IT needs in various guises over recent years; our end of year research has been called ‘IT in your organisation’, ‘digital leaders’, ‘CIO versus CEO’ and so on. This year the two key categories we surveyed (IT leaders and digital professionals) moved beyond citing cybersecurity and cloud as the two key issues — AI has advanced in importance.

The main issues

Each year we ask both leaders and professionals for what they consider to be the top technology issues to be addressed. The nuance in the question is that we ask leaders what they consider the most important issues, but we ask professionals what they think should be prioritised by their organisations.

For IT leaders, in previous years, cloud and cybersecurity have consistently featured in the top two technology priorities, with an occasional swapping of order. In 2022, cloud was a top priority for 27% (58% featured it in their top three) and cybersecurity for 24% (57% in top three). In 2023 this changed markedly, with cloud is the top priority for only 12%, but cybersecurity for 39%. In 2023, business process automation replaced cloud as the second top priority — the first time it had dropped out of the top two for two years.

For 2024 cybersecurity maintains its pre-eminent place as a concern: 38% of leaders make it the number one priority, with 26% of IT professionals concurring. However AI is now rated by 21% of leaders and professionals as the second highest issue.

AI had stagnated a little in the previous two years — amongst IT leaders in 2023, AI was top priority for only 9%, with a figure of 10% in 2022 — so this is changing rapidly.

Cloud has been relegated by leaders to fourth, behind business process automation, and by professionals to sixth place — perhaps indicating the maturing of cloud technologies and its almost complete embedding in business. Cloud had featured in the top three concerns for leaders since 2013, so this is significant. The ‘maturity’ conclusion is also backed up by the responses to our perennial question: ‘What keeps you up at night?’ Only 1% of leaders and 2% of professionals selected cloud. The big concerns are:

• Cybersecurity attacks: 41% (leaders) and 22% (professionals)
• AI: 13% (leaders) and 16% (professionals)
• Lack of resources: 11% (both leaders and professionals)

IT professionals were very worried about losing key staff and the pace of change (12% respectively) — more so than their leaders.

As in 2023, aiming for net zero was of more concern for IT professionals than tech leaders as a number one priority. The 2024 numbers show 11% of professionals against 6% of leaders considering this a number one priority — a slight change on 2023, which showed 12% of IT professionals against 3% of leaders. The number of respondents including the aim of net zero in their top three priorities was also weighted in favour of IT professionals: 23% against 13% for leaders. Both of these numbers are down on 2023, when 26% of professionals put this in the top three, against 16% amongst leaders.

Brian Runciman MBCS, Head of Content and Insight, BCS