CIO Agenda

The 2022 CIO Agenda analyzes data from the 2022 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey and supplements it with interviews from several CIOs (or equivalents) who had interesting stories about their enterprise’s transition to business composability.

The 2022 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive survey was conducted online from 3 May 2021 through 19 July 2021 among Gartner Executive Programs members and other CIOs. Qualified respondents are each the most senior IT leader (CIO) for their overall organization or a part of their organization (for example, a business unit or region).

The survey gathered data from 2,387 CIO respondents in 85 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $9 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $198 billion in IT spending.

The survey was developed collaboratively by a team of Gartner analysts, and was reviewed, tested and administered by Gartner’s Research Data and Analytics team.

Use this research to assess how your organization is doing in terms of business composability and three key areas in which to focus. You can also learn how your peers are ranking and why business composability is key to a successful organization.

For the Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Agenda 2022, Gartner defines a high-composability cohort (n = 150) as respondents that meet all three of these criteria:

• Practice composable thinking widely (6) or extensively (7) throughout the enterprise.
• Practice composable business architecture widely (6) or extensively (7) throughout the enterprise.
• Use composable technology widely (6) or extensively (7) throughout the enterprise.

Gartner defines a low-composability cohort (n = 316) as respondents whose practice of business composability in all three domains is not at all (1), rarely (2) or somewhat (3).

The rest of the organizations are considered moderate business composability.

CIOs and technology executives must prepare to operate in a more disruptive business environment by making their enterprises more composable. CIOs are in a great position to lead the charge and advance composable thinking, business architecture and technology at the same time. Plans should include steps in the three domains that reinforce each other.

Business composability combines mindset, practices and tools to accelerate digital business. Gartner’s primary research found some enterprises used composability to beat competitors during the pandemic.

IT budgets are expected to grow at the fastest rate in over 10 years as survey respondents reported an average growth of 3.6% in the overall IT budget for 2022

The increase in IT budget means CIOs and technology executives have a choice of where to invest. Without big deficits to remedy elsewhere, they can afford to invest in composability, especially for developers and business architects who can design in a composable manner as well as invest in packaged business capabilities

1. Modularity: Partitioning a domain into managed components — to scale and control change
2. Autonomy: Minimizing dependence of components from each other — to maintain the integrity of change
3. Orchestration: Prescribing and negotiating interactions between components — to enable re-composition to form new processes
4. Discovery: Ability to discover, understand and design new opportunities using existing components to guide, track and secure change