According to research by HPE Aruba Networking,64% of IT leaders believe that cybersecurity concerns  are negatively impacting their organisation’s willingness to invest in innovative tech. This is part of a broader trend locally, with studies showing that 42% of South African companies say fear of the unknown is a hinderance to their adoption of technology such as AI. But this comes at a time when IT leaders must be empowered to embrace AI to accelerate business-critical transformation – something more than 60% of South African companies say is important to their business.

With headlines full of the promise of the latest technologies, HPE Aruba Networking’s research, which features responses from 2100 IT leaders across 21 countries, examined how organisations are currently approaching the interplay between innovation and risk. The report also sheds light on the role IT leaders and the network must play in facilitating safer innovation.

A vast majority (95%) of IT leaders state that digitisation is fundamentally important to unlocking new revenue streams in the next 12 months. In fact, both IT and the broader business are pushing to bring in new technologies that can boost innovation in terms of how the business functions and what it offers. As they look to increase innovation, organisations are turning to emerging technology, and are currently using or planning to bring in 5G (91%), AI and machine learning (ML) solutions (89%), or IoT and smart sensors (88%).

Read the gull article in issue 19 of EngineerIT now available for download or click here to read the full story.