A new Lenovo global research study of 500 chief technology officers (CTOs) across different industries and countries released today at the company’s global “Tech World” innovation event reveals their perceptions on the future of technology.

“We’re encouraged to see our vision of the New IT architecture resonating so strongly with CTOs across the world”

The study uncovers interesting findings about global CTOs’ viewpoints about how the traditional IT will continue to evolve into a “New IT” architecture, where client devices, edge computing, cloud computing, network and artificial intelligence all work together to address CTOs’ commons pain points and provide them with solutions as they drive further global digitalization across all industries.

“We’re encouraged to see our vision of the New IT architecture resonating so strongly with CTOs across the world,” said Lenovo CTO Dr. Yong Rui. “These research findings are incredibly valuable as the ICT industry continues to innovate and build new technology capabilities for the future. This research gives us deep insights about the priorities and expectations from global CTOs, and we will leverage this knowledge to better help our customers harness data and create insights to transform their business.”

Top findings from Lenovo’s survey of more than 500 CTOs include:

The shift to hybrid work environment is elevating the importance of elements of IT architecture:

CTOs generally have a positive perspective on their organization’s technology architecture, with 43 per cent calling it “improved,” 39 per cent noting its “easy to use” and just 6 per cent characterizing as “lacking.”

Elements surging in importance include Smart Devices (76%), Smart IoT (70%), and Scenario-Based Solutions (76%).

Looking ahead, CTOs noted the importance of the cloud, software and computing as key components for the future of a hybrid work environment, with 84 per cent optimistic about the future of hybrid cloud.

Major challenges exist for CTOs relating to cybersecurity and accessibility in emerging tech:

Respondents out of the United States (63%), Brazil (61%) and India (71%) all cited cybersecurity as a top challenge they need to address within their organizations.

CTOs in the US(64%) and United Kingdom (67%) also mentioned regulation/compliance as a top concern.

Compatibility issues in enterprise infrastructure and user experience are primary pain points when CTOs make purchasing, upgrading, migrating and retiring decisions of IT infrastructure for their organizations.

CTOs say there is potential to utilize technology even more extensively at work:

Across each of the five elements (Client – Edge – Cloud – Network – Intelligence), substantial portions of CTOs see opportunities for their companies to utilize dimensions of the IT infrastructure even more than they already are – including elements like 5G MEC (72%), the public edge cloud (67%), IoT Edge (65%) and private edge cloud (58%).

When looking to solve technological problems, most cite (82%) third-party vendors as important to helping solve challenges relating to technological architecture.

Most CTOs believe that elements of edge computing (including Edge AI, Edge Security, and “Device-Edge-Cloud” Collaborative, etc.) will be important moving forward into the future.

Lenovo’s concept of “New IT” resonates among CTOs across the globe as and encompassing:

More than 4-in-5 say Lenovo’s description of “New IT” captures and describes the future of ICT (Information Communications Technology) “extremely” or “very well”.

Apart from these five components of “New IT” (Client – Edge – Cloud – Network – Intelligence), CTOs named areas such as “R&D / Innovation” (9%), “Data Management” (7%) and “security” (6%) as other components that will be important to shaping the future of technology architecture.