David Weldon

Despite being the number one investment priority of CIOs today, few say they have reached a level of maturity in their data management efforts.

IT leaders must be prepared to groom new hires to help them understand and unlock business value from analytics, says BCBS exec.

Worldwide IT spending will reach $3.7 trillion this year, with the primary drivers of growth being projects in digital business, blockchain, the IoT, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

A new study out from CareerCast reports that those three job occupations have hiring outlooks of 21 percent, 18 percent and 17 percent respectively.

One in three business leaders believe their company will need to further invest in artificial intelligence over the next 36 months to keep pace with competitors.

Artificial intelligence, the IoT, cloud computing and cryptocurrencies are among the technologies that will dominate new IT investments, according to the researcher.

Organizations are rapidly adopting the technology to drive business opportunities, but the pool of experienced workers remains limited for the moment.

Organizations continued to have great need for infosec and DevOps talent, but there was little gain for data processing professionals in September.

Showing only modest gains is the data center systems area. Gartner expects that sector to see a 1.8 percent increase in spending, up from 1.7 estimated growth in 2017.

To meet the challenge, CIOs must understand both what will be expected of them, and what they truly aspire to be, says Gartner's Peter Sondergaard.