Clark, welcome.
What are some of the main areas of focus for CIOs at the moment?
Well, Georgie, we do an annual survey twice a year asking CIOs
what are their core priorities.
And one of the things that we always try to get after is what
are the strategic choices that they're trying to make.
And, right, last year was really focused on cost.
Everyone was coming out of COVID trying to reorient themselves,
trying to get to profitability.
And this year's actually been a bit of a mix.
We're seeing people really trying to focus on growth but
also so trying to manage the cost.
And so it's that balance between focused investment and growth.
And really a lot of the story has been around AI and
generative AI. And how do we enable the investments for that
while managing the cost in other places to to be able to fund the
growth.
With all of that in mind, how should they be approaching IT
spend?
Yeah, it's like we said—it's a balance, right?
You've got to start to think about the growth opportunities.
AI, analytics, security are some of the core foundational pillars
that people are doing.
They're also continuing their digital transformation journeys,
investing in cloud, like those opportunities.
People are still getting value out of that at the corporate
environment.
And so on the flip side, they're also thinking about more mature
technologies.
How do I manage the cost of the things that I've always had for
a while?
And are there ways for me to consolidate vendors, really
sharpen my spend in areas that that aren't giving me as much
return on investment as much as they've seen in the past?
You've seen that shift from cost to both cost and growth.
Where are you expecting that to go, especially in the context
of, as you said, advancing technologies,
GenAI?
I mean in all the conversations that we've been having with with
our clients, the conversation has really been around how do I
enable this fundamental transformation we're seeing with
AI and generative AI.
And funding that journey is really an opportunity for CIOs
because they don't have the luxury of necessarily increasing
their budgets as much as they want.
They have to figure out how to enable growth, but while also
maintaining the budget pressure that they have with the current
economy.
Clark, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Georgie.