A recent report from Kong Inc. revealed that 75% of IT leaders are afraid of competitive displacement if they do not keep up with the pace of digital innovation.

1. 4/18/22, 7:35 PM IT Leaders Are Increasingly Afraid of Competitive Displacement
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IT Leaders Are Increasingly Afraid of Competitive
Displacement
A recent report from Kong Inc. revealed that 75% of IT leaders are afraid of competitive
displacement if they do not keep up with the pace of digital innovation.
The enterprise IT industry seems to be flourishing since the pandemic. With organizations heavily
investing in digital transformation initiatives to keep their operations sustainable, the status of the IT
department in the organization has become much more significant. However, this has also resulted in
increased pressure on IT professionals and leaders. In fact, as per a 2022 report from Kong Inc. that
surveyed over 500 senior technology leaders across the US, Europe, and Asia titled “2022 API &
Microservices Connectivity Report,” 75% of technology leaders are afraid of competitive
displacement if they are not able to keep up with digital innovation. This is up from 13% since 2021
and 18% since 2020. This fear is further compounded by the “Great Resignation” and a lack of skilled
and talented professionals, as cited by 34% of all the survey respondents as hampering innovation.
According to new research, 40% of the respondents believe that their organization will go under or be
acquired by a competitor within three years if they fail to keep up with the pace of digital innovation.
At the same time, an astounding (81%) of all the respondents predict the same result within six years
and virtually every IT leader (98%) within ten years.
A few more key findings from the report:
Tech leaders prioritizing to build exceptional digital experiences
When asked about their top business priorities, tech leaders heavily emphasized the need to
continuously improve application security (44%), enhance application performance/reliability (40%),
make the adoption of applications more seamless to bridge the transition to the future (40%) while
improving developer efficiency (39%).
By Vishal Muktewar - April 15, 2022

2. 4/18/22, 7:35 PM IT Leaders Are Increasingly Afraid of Competitive Displacement
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Also Read: Three Leadership Lessons for IT Leaders from the Pandemic
As organizations make an effort to accomplish their business goals, technology teams are most
commonly challenged by the complexity of using various technologies (38%), dependency on legacy
technologies/monolithic architectures (37%), and a lack of automation in the IT ties back to
resources on manual tasks (37%).
APIs and modern software architectures act as catalysts for innovation
With digital experiences holding the key to the growth of an organization, it comes as no surprise that
around 86% of the survey respondents think that microservices-based applications are the future.
Their ability to support distributed applications is vital for success. Moreover, 84% of the
respondents stated that organizations that are not able to ensure the reliability and resiliency of the
APIs that connect microservices-based applications are more likely to lose market share to
competitors who can.
Around 89% of technology leaders stated that their organizations have either fully transitioned to
entirely distributed architectures or use a mix of monolithic architectures and microservices, with
45% fully transitioning to distributed software architectures.
Tech Leaders start to invest in empowering developer teams
Equipping developers with the advanced technology tools they require will be a key focus for
business leaders in 2022. To meet their business needs and overcome their IT challenges,
technology leaders are planning to assign more to their IT/developer budgets. In fact, around 79% of
the respondents expect their organizations to increase IT/developer budgets in 2022, with a vast
majority (64%) expecting it to increase by as much as 25%. Around 15% of the respondents say their
IT/developer budget will surge by 25-50%.
Succeeding in 2022 and beyond, organizations will need to make the customer experience their top
priority. They should begin to invest in the right tech stack and empower their developer teams to
build the future application.
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Vishal Muktewar
Vishal Muktewar is a Senior Correspondent at On Dot Media. He reports news that focuses on the latest trends and innovations
happening in the B2B industry. An IT engineer by profession, Vishal has worked at Insights Success before joining Ondot. His love for
stories has driven him to take up a career in enterprise journalism. He effectively uses his knowledge of technology and flair for
writing, for crafting features, articles and interactions for technology enterprise media platforms.
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