Recent research from Unisys Corporation shows that information technology (IT) executives view driving technology innovation as an imperative for them to help their businesses flourish in a global marketplace that daily grows more challenging and competitive.

In the online survey of 188 North American CIOs and other IT decision-makers, 76 percent of respondents indicated that they believed their organizations should not simply provide technology support for internal business organizations, but should also actively partner with their clients to create and drive initiatives that further the strategic business objectives of the enterprise.

A combined 60 percent of the respondents said that their organizations were taking such a leadership role, with 48 percent currently co-leading innovation initiatives with business organizations and 12 percent actually leading business innovation across their companies.

"These executives clearly believe that implementing innovative technologies to achieve key business goals is a crucial element in a strategic partnership with their business organizations – and many are deploying technologies that directly drive such change," said Janis Cooper, vice president, Marketing Programs, Unisys Systems and Technology.

The respondents who showed that they were taking a leadership role in advancing the business were most likely to invest in technologies that actually help achieve those strategic goals more efficiently, quickly and cost-effectively.

For example, 77 percent of the respondents identified reducing operating costs as a key business goal, while 69 percent cited increasing business agility – the ability to use technology to respond to both short- and long-term changes in the business landscape – as a critical objective.

Fifty-six percent said that they were investing in server virtualization, while 52 percent are making investments in business process automation. Unisys views those two technologies as among the most important in making data center operations more efficient and cost-effective by enabling a reduced number of systems to perform more tasks more efficiently. Adoption of those technologies can also result in lower power costs and overhead requirements and permit greater agility in responding to business changes.

In addition, a number of the IT executives responding to the survey demonstrated that they understand the importance of adopting structured ways to manage technology and thus gain greater efficiencies through standardized delivery of IT services. For example, 32 percent of the respondents say that they have ongoing IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) initiatives for service management to make their organizations more effective in delivering against business objectives.