Security concerns and talent shortages risk stalling innovation in the UK

Despite many companies accelerating their digital transformation programmes, just 42 percent of technology leaders report a willingness to take on risk.

The Multicloud Annual Research Report 2022 from Rackspace Technology shows that cloud remains a key component of many IT strategies to improve customer experience and ease of use (47 percent), as well as the agility to scale up and down based on demand (39 percent). Many organisations are now also looking towards serverless to seize on the advantages that the early adopters (33 percent of respondents) are experiencing, like the ability to automate workflows (49 percent), scale IoT applications (41 percent), and deploy virtual assistants (41 percent).

However, concerns around security and IT talent “have brought a dark cloud” over the pursuit of such digital transformation and resulted in a low appetite for risk.

Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) stated that security and data privacy concerns present the top barrier to preventing their organisation from achieving peak cloud benefit and innovation in the space. 86 percent of respondents are either running applications on serverless or planning to in the next three years and 49 percent cited security specifically as a barrier to adoption.

The second most commonly reported challenge is the talent shortage, which is in turn exacerbating leaders’ security challenges. In fact, the talent shortage is inhibiting organisations’ adoption of new development methods in their DevOps (83 percent) and presents a barrier to serverless adoption (43 percent).

Overcoming security and talent concerns

Understanding the need to balance the risk presented by security and talent concerns and the pursuit of innovation, nearly half of technology leaders are now working with external strategic partners for support with security (46 percent), IT strategy (45 percent), managed services (41 percent), and training (33 percent).

Businesses are also bolstering their efforts to attract new IT talent by promoting training and development opportunities (44 percent), increasing salaries (31 percent) and promoting opportunities for hybrid and remote working (29 percent). And the same incentives are being offered to current employees to help curb staff turnover (31 percent, 37 percent and 31 percent respectively).

Andy Brierley, UK general manager at Rackspace said: “The current security landscape has put a dark cloud over many organisations’ technology ambitions, with IT leaders facing immense pressure between the pursuit of innovation and taking on greater risk through the adoption of new technologies. This has been further aggravated by the talent shortage that continues to plague the IT and security sectors.

“To ensure that businesses don’t have to stall their digital transformation projects, or take on undue risk in pursuing them due to a lack of skills, IT leaders should look for partners that can bring greater expertise and resources to help them continue to innovate safely.”