Situation Report 2024:
Managing Technology Chaos
Is technology driving progress—or chaos? The answer, it seems, may be both. According to our annual survey of 1,500 IT decision makers across the US, the UK and Germany, 76% of organizations say technology has created more chaos over the past 2-3 years.
Overview
Why are companies seeing more chaos?
Our respondents pointed to everything from a growing skills gap, to conflict between legacy and modern platforms, to the overall tech culture within the organization. Significantly, 42% invested heavily without a clear integration plan to bring it all together.
The rise in technical debt
Investing in new technology quickly without a clear plan for managing it leads to technical debt. More companies in the US (74%) said their technical debt has increased, compared to Germany (69%) or the UK (66%).
The challenges of the chaos of connectivity
If all this new technology isn't properly utilized, it won't create value. It will create technology chaos. Decision-making will be difficult, agility slow and productivity limited. 65% of organizations have governance issues that are made worse because of technological complexity.
This chaos can manifest in Operations, Connectivity and IT.
Decision Making
80% of companies say that technology issues can slow down decision making and/or action. The UK (84%) and US (82%) were similar, with Germany (73%) slightly less affected. Inaccessible data and challenges moving data were most commonly blamed.
Service Disruption
89% of organizations have been forced to pause operations due to technology issues. 22% doing so "often," 43% "sometimes" and 24% "not that often." Only 11% have never shut down due to tech issues. German companies (31%) are most likely to shut down "often" compared to UK (19%) and US (17%).
Agility
Technology that is too complex gets in the way of business-critical initiatives and results in opportunity costs. The US missed opportunities least often, on average. UK companies missed product launches more than anything else. For German companies, the employee experience most suffered.
Business Pain Points
Fallout from technology chaos is everywhere. These are the challenges where companies said they were feeling it the most (i.e. Strongly or Somewhat Agreed):
Investment in Technology
Some tech investments add to complexity, while others actually help manage it. For example, generative AI can create chaos since it is used by many different departments and ingests (and creates) tons of data. Something like API Management actually helps to control this chaos (or at least some of it).
Methodology and Survey Information
- This survey was conducted online between November 6 and 17, 2023 by Regina Corso Consulting, examining how global IT professionals feel about various technical issues they deal with on a regular basis.
- This survey is among 1,500 IT Decision Makers with 500 each from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. All respondents are at least a director and work in a company with at least 250 employees.
- In addition, all ITDM work in the Manufacturing, Retail, Banking/Finance/Insurance, Government or Transport/Logistics industry and there are around 100 from each industry from each country.
- The report is authored by Software AG.
Demographics of the sample:
- Age: 18-34=21%; 35-54=76%; 55+=3%
- Gender: Male=82%; Female=17%; Non-binary=1%
- Years in IT: 5 years or less=10%; 6-10 years=41%; 11-20 years=37%; over 20 years=12%
- Years working for company: 5 years or less=28%; 6-10 years=42%; 11-20 years=27%; over 20 years=3%
- Company size: 250-999=66%; 1,000 or more=34%
- Title: Director=31%; VP/SVP=20%: Senior Executive/C-Suite=49%
- Type of IT professional: Main IT decisionmaker=77%; One of the decisionmakers=22%; make some of the IT decisions=1%
More information
- For a more interpretative look at the year ahead, the Software AG Reality Check can be found here.
- For any more information on the data or methodology, please contact the Software AG press office: corporatecommunications@softwareag.com
