Of the five priorities outlined in this datacenter-specific brief, CyrusOne_Five CIO Priorities for 2013, three include innovation as a key challenge…

Increasing numbers of new IT applications and hardware types. To say CIOs are falling behind relative to technology implementations would be an understatement in today’s era of rapid technological advancements.

When asked what they’re most worried about, CIOs top answer was speed: 57% of the IT leaders who responded to the recent InformationWeek Global CIO Survey cite “can’t implement fast enough” as a top concern. Keeping up with the ongoing innovation in the datacenter has become nearly impossible for the CIO, who simply cannot innovate fast enough.

Business innovation requires IT resources. Liberating the resources necessary for innovation is a critical necessity for CIOs. However, they are often mired in the day-to-day challenges of running an IT department. Most firms find up to 80 percent of their IT budgets must go to running and maintaining technology they already have – leaving as little as 20 percent for innovation…

Enhancing existing IT plans is not a long-term, or even a short-term, solution. “Businesses need

fresh thinking about the architecture of tomorrow,”

writes Bob Evans of Oracle in Forbes’ The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013, “because merely rehabbing or adding on to the existing plan will simply not meet the wildly different and moredemanding requirements of tomorrow.”