Despite economic turmoil, global tech spend grows at its third fastest rate in over 15 years, finds world’s largest digital leadership survey

• But investment slows in emerging tech like AI and Big Data – threatening innovation
• Fears over cyber warfare jump dramatically as attacks begin to rise
• Over half of large organisations hit by a cyber attack
• Shortage of tech talent at all time high as pay demands become unsustainable
• Women in tech moving in a positive direction, helped by hybrid working

Despite 87% of digital leaders expecting an economic downturn, global tech spend this year is set to grow at its third fastest rate in over 15 years, as over half (52%) of digital leaders expect their technology budget to rise, and only 12% expect their budget to fall, finds the world’s largest and longest running survey of senior technology decision makers.

But the Nash Squared Digital Leadership Report, in collaboration with CIONET found investment has slowed in emerging tech like AI and Big Data, threatening opportunities to innovate through global economic instability. Although investment remains strong in cloud (63% reporting large-scale usage), companies are cutting back their investment in all the other technologies (Big Data, AI/ML and RPA) that are key to innovation and to gaining a competitive advantage.

Over half of large organisations hit by a cyber attack

Amidst the huge investment in the cloud, over a third (41%) of digital leaders are reporting that the cloud is creating security headaches due to the complexities it can create, especially for large distributed organisations. Over half (52%) of the largest organisations (total IT budget >$250m), report a major cyber-attack in the last two years. Meanwhile, global unrest and a growing awareness of the politicisation around cyber warfare has led to over a third of digital leaders (40%) fearing an attack from foreign powers – shooting up from just 12% in 2018.

The report also found:

• Shortage of cyber talent continues to be a significant issue for digital leaders – Cyber skills are the second most sought after technology skill in the world. This shortage and the increasing cyber threat has left only a third (29%) of digital leaders feeling confident they have all reasonable risks covered.
• The war for talent, and keeping pay demands reasonable, emerges as a big challenge – 70% of digital leaders state that a skills shortage prevents them from keeping up with the pace of change; the largest ever recorded. 62% think that organisations will never have enough technology staff and a similar number (60%) feel that the rising cost of living has made salary demands unsustainable.
• Government policies aren’t working on tech skills – A staggering 74% of digital leaders feel that their government’s policies are completely ineffective at tackling the skills shortage.
• Robots, a way to plug the gap in the tech talent market – On average, digital leaders plan to use digital labour to automate around 1 in 6 (16%) of their workforce over the next five years.
• Hybrid/Remote working boosts women in tech and access to global talent – Hybrid working is now commonplace in tech, with 2 to 3 days a week in the office the average requirement. This is starting to help have a positive impact on the number of women in the global tech sector: female leaders are up to 14% globally, almost a quarter (23%) of the tech team is now female, and 28% of new hires in the last two years have been women. The pipeline is slowly but surely improving. The report also found that a quarter (26%) of digital leaders say that remote working has enabled them to start recruiting talent from overseas.

Bev White, CEO of Nash Squared said: