Over the past few weeks, Anunta sponsored back-to-back CIO gatherings in India and Singapore and I observed a striking pattern. At both the CIO Crown conference in Mumbai and the CIO100 symposium in Singapore, instead of sharing triumphant stories of new digital initiatives, CIOs opened up about something far more mundane yet critical: the daily strain of maintaining a stable digital environment. In conversation after conversation, technology leaders from two very different markets told eerily similar tales of firefighting and fatigue. It became clear that in the closing stretch of 2025, CIOs aren’t losing sleep over a lack of innovation; they’re worried about the operational grind of sustaining the innovation they already have.
Hearing this buzzword in both India and Singapore signaled an unmistakable shift in priorities. The top concern for CIOs today is no longer chasing the next big tech capability or innovation; it’s taming the complexity of what’s already been built. In other words, expanding capacity has taken a backseat to managing the operational weight of existing systems. That reality speaks volumes about where enterprises truly stand on their digital journey as we head into 2025, and it’s a perspective that cuts through the usual buzzwords and hype cycles.
At the CIO Crown event in India, one theme dominated the discussions: fragmentation. CIOs described IT environments cluttered with too many toolsets, overlapping dashboards, and a cacophony of monitoring alerts. Visibility was not the issue. Actionability was. Even after significant modernization, teams still rely heavily on manual intervention to maintain the smooth operation of hybrid work environments. Leaders spoke about fluctuating Digital Employee Experiences and unpredictable performance, as well as the immense pressure this constant firefighting puts on their stretched operations teams.
There was a shared realization among India’s IT chiefs that years of rapid digital growth have outpaced the evolution of their operating models. Now, many are hitting the brakes on new deployments and asking how to regain control over what they’ve built. Their focus has shifted to consolidation and stability: fewer points of failure, clearer telemetry signals, and a more structured, proactive approach to resolving issues before users even notice.
For many Indian enterprises, the next phase of “digital transformation” isn’t about rolling out more technology at all – it’s about mastering and stabilizing the technology they already have in place. Transformation fatigue is real. Indian enterprises are entering a phase where control, not capability, determines progress. The mantra for many has effectively become: the next big step is not more transformation, it’s better control.
A couple of weeks later in Singapore, the conversations reflected a higher level of IT maturity, but the concerns sounded familiar. Many organizations across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region have already ticked the major boxes: mature cloud adoption, well-established hybrid work models, and structured operational processes. Yet even these advanced IT shops are struggling with the intricate complexity of modern IT. CIOs described the challenge of maintaining consistency across sprawling multi-cloud estates, diverse application stacks, and teams distributed across geographies. Here, the issue isn’t basic stability; it’s consistency and optimization in the face of growing complexity.
In these discussions, the focus was on refinement. Technology leaders sought to cut through the “operational noise” to filter out redundant alerts and streamline the numerous dashboards, allowing their teams to focus on what truly mattered. A top concern was ensuring uniform identity and access management, providing a single pane of glass for managing both user identities and the devices they use across borders. The objective is for users to have a seamless and secure experience regardless of location. CIOs also discussed the need for a unified operational narrative that integrates performance, cost, and Digital Employee Experience into a single, coherent view for decision-makers. Everyone acknowledged that the complexity of modern IT will only increase; the priority now is to prevent that complexity from overwhelming the operating model. In Singapore and across the APAC region, the mandate has shifted to optimization: making what’s already in place run smarter, smoother, and with less human effort, so that the operating model never becomes a bottleneck to innovation.
Despite different starting points, CIOs in both India and Singapore are converging on a single, shared priority: operational efficiency. Whether it’s grappling with too many tools in India or too many clouds in Singapore, digital success is increasingly defined by how easily organizations can run what they already have, rather than how much more they can add. In both markets, CIOs expressed a desire for IT environments that are predictable, stable, and manageable at scale. They want the performance and agility that modern technologies promise, but with an operational model that doesn’t require Herculean effort to maintain. In essence, they’re looking for a better alignment between the business’s expectations and the reality of day-to-day IT operations.
It’s no surprise, then, that operational efficiency has taken center stage. This focus on efficiency isn’t just operational nitpicking; it’s born from challenging experience. When systems behave predictably and reliably, everything else falls into place. The digital employee experience improves, recovery from outages is faster, and even cost governance becomes clearer. However, when operational gaps persist, complexity gradually accumulates until it reaches a breaking point, undermining even the best-laid digital strategies. In both India and Singapore, CIOs are recognizing that efficiency is the new linchpin of success: it’s what determines whether their ambitious digital investments actually deliver value or become cautionary tales.
These on-the-ground observations reinforce a core principle that I’ve long advocated: stability and efficiency must be designed into the IT operating model, not bolted on as an afterthought. In practice, this means rethinking how we monitor and manage our environments. For instance, an intelligence-led approach, one that leverages AI and analytics, is increasingly essential. Instead of drowning in raw data and alerts, IT teams need systems that distill millions of data points into a handful of actionable insights. I’ve seen how powerful this can be: when you replace noisy dashboards with smart signals and pattern-detection, you empower your operations team to resolve issues faster and even prevent incidents before they happen. It’s a shift from mere visibility to accurate, actionable intelligence, and it’s critical for keeping pace with the scale of modern digital ecosystems.
Crucially, designing for operational efficiency isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor; it must adapt to each organization’s context and maturity. This is something we emphasize in our approach at Anunta. In India, where many firms are grappling with unwieldy new digital setups, we focus on stabilizing and standardizing the workspace environments so that IT teams can move from constant firefighting to continuous improvement. That might involve consolidating toolsets, simplifying management, and automating routine tasks to handle incidents more efficiently. In the more mature enterprises of Singapore and the APAC region, the challenge is different but analogous: we help fine-tune already sophisticated operations by strengthening multi-cloud governance, unifying management frameworks, and ensuring performance remains consistent even as complexity increases. The guiding goal in both cases is the same: reduce the operational drag and improve predictability. By embedding these principles into the core operating model, CIOs can turn efficiency from a slogan into a daily reality.
So, what can CIOs do next? Based on the conversations from both markets, a few strategic imperatives stand out as we head into 2026:
These steps create a path toward an operating model that reduces friction and builds resilience. These are practical steps that CIOs in both emerging and mature IT landscapes can take to transition their operations from a reactive to a proactive approach.
As we enter 2026, the message from CIOs across India and Singapore is resoundingly clear: technology adoption is no longer the primary hurdle; the operating model is. In a layperson’s language, having the latest tech means little if your organization can’t run it smoothly day in and day out. Enterprises that invest in streamlining and strengthening their IT operations will extract significantly more value from every digital initiative. Those that don’t will find that creeping complexity becomes an invisible brake on their growth.
Operational efficiency has thus become the new mandate in enterprise IT, and for good reason. It’s the determining factor in whether all the flashy new tools and platforms truly deliver on their promise to the business. This was perhaps the most crucial insight to emerge from my conversations with CIOs in both India and Singapore. Across these two markets, one racing to stabilize and the other striving to optimize, the priority remains the same. Ensuring that modern technology actually works as intended, at scale, day after day, is now recognized as mission-critical. It’s a strategic shift that no CIO or IT leader in the region can afford to overlook, and it will define who thrives in the digital economy in the years ahead.
Research Review with Anunta’s CTO | Jan 14 | 12PM PST/3PM EST
