Corporate structures hinder digitization

However, most companies shy away from far-reaching organizational changes such as setting up an innovation department, flattening the hierarchy and replacing managers.

Technologically, they are focusing on better data networking (88 percent) and expanding data analytics (78 percent), developing new products and services (80 percent), and expanding cloud capacity (80 percent).

The study participants identified a lack of skilled workers, inflexible business processes, rigid organizational structures, a lack of overarching planning, and unclear responsibilities as the biggest hurdles to digitization.

The data was collected as part of Capgemini's annual IT Trends Study in September and October 2016. A total of 148 IT managers from companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland took part. The study is in its 15th year.

Organizational challenge

"Digitization is apparently less a technical challenge than an organizational one. Traditional structures are hindering change, both at the corporate level and in the IT department.

CIOs in whose companies digitization is of high importance are more willing to make changes.

This is obviously paying off, as these companies are well advanced in networking and analyzing data and have already moved on to develop new products and services from the insights"

Uwe Dumslaff, Chief Technology Officer at Capgemini in Germany, explains the results.

The use of agile methods from development to operations, support and project management has remained stable over the past twelve months (an average of 23 in the previous year versus 24 percent in the current survey).

The reasons for this are apparently difficulties with the agile way of working, which companies either cannot integrate into the traditional organizational model or which is not accepted by employees.

Agile culture causes problems

In addition, many CIOs complain about a lack of skilled workers in this area.The bottom line is that the problems are delaying the shortening of release cycles. One-third, and thus most of the participants, update their individual applications only one to three times a year.

However, many have the goal of becoming faster: The majority aim for one update per month or per week and therefore have a much higher need for change than is currently feasible.

Consolidation of Big Data applications

This year, 18 percent of companies in German-speaking countries are running one or more Big Data applications of their own. On balance, this is less than last year (24 percent).

"The decline is not necessarily negative, however, as some industries are already consolidating on a European or global scale"

comments Thomas Heimann, Principal Enterprise Architect & Expert IT Trends at Capgemini.

"Some pilots also end in a decision to use a vendor's services or wait until more data is available.

But interest in Big Data remains high, and the number of companies exploring Big Data in workshops or pilot applications has increased."

Rising cloud usage among enterprises

Cloud usage has also increased: 75 percent of companies now obtain services from their own cloud and as many as 79 percent obtain services from a provider cloud.

However, the high user rate should not obscure the fact that the latter still only account for a small share of overall performance. They provide 10 percent of all IT services this year (previous year 6.5 percent), while company-owned clouds have a share of 36 percent (previous year 27 percent).

Large corporations and medium-sized businesses in particular have greatly expanded their use of the cloud.

Top technologies 2017

The first places on the list of the top technologies of the year are occupied by Cloud Security, Security Automation, BYOx Security, Privacy by Design and Predictive Analytics.

The frequent mention of security topics has to do with the current threat situation on the one hand, and the EU General Data Protection Regulation on the other. Within its framework, there will be new security requirements, such as the application of the Privacy by Design principle.

By contrast, digital solutions for improving the in-store shopping and service experience, mobile payment, robotic process automation, mobile services for vehicles, and wearables fall far behind in terms of relevance for the company from an IT perspective; they are the "flops of the year".