Gartner Survey Reveals the Scarcity of Current Blockchain Deployments

Organizations Should Not Overestimate the Short-Term Benefits of Blockchain

Only 1 percent of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organizations, and only 8 percent of CIOs were in short-term planning or active experimentation with blockchain, according to Gartner's 2018 CIO Survey. Furthermore, 77 percent of CIOs surveyed said their organization has no interest in the technology and/or no action planned to investigate or develop it. 

"This year’s Gartner CIO Survey provides factual evidence about the massively hyped state of blockchain adoption and deployment (see Figure 1)," said David Furlonger, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "It is critical to understand what blockchain is and what it is capable of today, compared to how it will transform companies, industries and society tomorrow." 

Mr. Furlonger added that rushing into blockchain deployments could lead organizations to significant problems of failed innovation, wasted investment, rash decisions and even rejection of a game-changing technology. 

The rocky road to blockchain
Among 293 CIOs of organizations that are in short-term planning or have already invested in blockchain initiatives, 23 percent of CIOs said that blockchain requires the most new skills to implement of any technology area, while 18 percent said that blockchain skills are the most difficult to find. A further 14 percent indicated that blockchain requires the greatest change in the culture of the IT department, and 13 percent believed that the structure of the IT department had to change in order to implement blockchain.

"The challenge for CIOs is not just finding and retaining qualified engineers, but finding enough to accommodate growth in resources as blockchain developments grow," said Mr. Furlonger. "Qualified engineers may be cautious due to the historically libertarian and maverick nature of the blockchain developer community." 

CIOs also recognized that blockchain implementation will change the operating and business model of the organizations, and they indicated a challenge in being ready and able to accommodate this requirement. "Blockchain technology requires understanding of, at a fundamental level, aspects of security, law, value exchange, decentralized governance, process and commercial architectures," said Mr. Furlonger. "It therefore implies that traditional lines of business and organization silos can no longer operate under their historical structures."