Pure Storage Research: Businesses Unequivocal That IT Warrants its Place in Boardroom Discussions

London, UK - July 27, 2021 - Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers storage as a service in a multi-cloud world, has announced findings from a European study of IT leaders, revealing how the pandemic has caused a seismic perception shift of IT within organisations and given technology leaders a superior strategic voice within the business. The research, based on interviews with 504 IT leaders across Europe, including 100 from the UK, looks at the motivations of IT leaders, the progress made in the last year and how their priorities are shifting.

With so many businesses realising how essential data is in powering their success, it follows that 87% of IT leaders are proud of the impact they've made over the last year. In fact, 57% are motivated by the knowledge that IT has proven its value over the last 12 months, 56% state their excitement in IT having a strategic voice within the organisation and over half (52%) are driven by the direct link between technology changes and business outcomes. Surprisingly, only 1 in 4 (26%) say that it is the technology itself that excites and motivates them, suggesting that increasingly, they are focused on innovating, adding value to their organisations and supporting digital transformation.

The role of IT in solving the business challenges posed by the pandemic

Despite the alignment between IT and the wider business being a challenge many organisations have grappled with for decades, the research suggests substantial improvements have been made amongst UK leaders over the last 12 months. In fact, technologists suggest that the alignment between IT leaders and the business has improved from an average 46% alignment two years' ago, to a 66% alignment now - the biggest improvement of all the countries surveyed.

When looking at how IT has been able to support the business through its challenges, IT leaders are confident in their contributions, with 41% stating that the technology infrastructure in place is very robust and 42% consider IT processes and culture to be very agile across the business in supporting the organisation's needs.

However, IT leaders are clearly frustrated by the lack of recognition they've received for being a key enabler for change across the business during the pandemic, with over half (51%) stating that their results haven't been recognised in the last 12 months. Other frustrations include competing priorities and reactive firefighting (45%) and the ongoing pressures to simultaneously innovate and cut costs (44%).