{"id":90935,"date":"2025-10-20T22:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/90935\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T22:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:37:09","slug":"what-cios-are-up-against-in-the-age-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/90935\/","title":{"rendered":"What CIOs Are Up Against in the Age of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent my career watching how customers embrace technology to transform the way they work. And right now, we\u2019re at the edge of one of the biggest shifts in personal computing I\u2019ve ever seen. CIOs aren\u2019t just managing upgrades, they\u2019re facing three converging pressures that affect employees, enterprises, and the future of work itself.<\/p>\n

Busywork is Draining Productivity<\/p>\n

American workers are eager to focus on meaningful, high-value work, the kind that sparks creativity, drives innovation, and fuels business growth. However, too often their potential is held back in repetitive tasks that consume more than half of their workday. I believe with that, we can start highlighting the customer benefits of productivity. \u00a0<\/p>\n

A new HP\/Talker survey<\/a> shows employees spend 51% of their workday on low-value tasks like email, data entry and file management. This fuels burnout and disengagement \u2014 one in three employees have considered quitting because of bad tech.<\/p>\n

Despite the promise of digital tools, fewer than 4 in 10 believe they have the right technology to succeed. It\u2019s a widening gap between innovation hype and workplace reality.<\/p>\n

A Changing Workforce with Rising Expectations<\/p>\n

Millennials and Gen Z are reshaping the workplace with fresh energy, creativity, and digital-first mindsets. Together, they already represent nearly half of the global workforce and by 2030, they\u2019ll be the clear majority. These generations thrive on collaboration, value flexibility, and view technology not as an add-on, but as an essential part of how they communicate, create, and succeed.<\/p>\n

Related:AWS’s New Security VP: A Turning Point for AI Cybersecurity Leadership?<\/a><\/p>\n

But meeting their expectations requires more than just access to tools, it requires providing the right tools. Nearly 40% of Millennials and 38% of Gen Z have considered leaving a job because of bad technology, compared with just 18% of Boomers. For younger workers, poor technology doesn\u2019t just slow them down, it undermines fulfilment and growth.<\/p>\n

GenZ in particular wants to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time innovating, supported by AI and modern platforms that match their natural ways of working: visual, fast, and creative. They\u2019re also looking to employers to help them build future-ready skills, not anchor them to outdated processes.<\/p>\n

Windows 10 End of Life<\/p>\n

All of this collides with a once-in-a-decade moment: the end of Windows 10 support. These refresh cycles are no longer just operating system updates \u2014 they\u2019re talent strategies. And they\u2019re the perfect opportunity to shift to AI PCs, a new generation of devices built to reduce busy work, meet rising workforce expectations, and strengthen security in the age of AI.<\/p>\n

Related:Who’s in Charge of Your AI Strategy? SAS CIO Explains Why It Matters<\/a><\/p>\n

What Makes an AI PC Different?<\/p>\n

Think about the leap from typewriters to word processors, or from filing cabinets to search engines. These weren\u2019t just new tools, they redefined how we worked.<\/p>\n

AI PCs are that kind of shift. They combine CPU and GPU power with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to run AI workloads directly on the device. These AI models go far beyond simple chatbots\u2014enabling translation, image creation, new ways of working with text, and real-time enhancements in collaboration. The result: less friction and more time for workers to focus on things that matter.<\/p>\n

For IT leaders, the benefits are tangible:<\/p>\n

Immediate gains like faster boot, instant multitasking, and longer battery life tuned for AI inference.<\/p>\n

Built-in privacy, BIOS level protections, and security with sensitive data processed locally.<\/p>\n

ROI through higher employee engagement, lower cloud costs, and reduced risk.<\/p>\n

From Productivity Gains to Protection<\/p>\n

A 2024 Gartner survey<\/a> found that 73% of enterprises experienced at least one AI-related security incident in the past year, with an average cost of $4.8 million per breach. At the same time, \u201cshadow AI,\u201d the unsanctioned use of public AI tools by employees, is creating new risks of data leakage, privacy violations, and compliance failures.<\/p>\n

Related:InformationWeek Podcast: Under AI, Is the Citizen Developer Era Over?<\/a><\/p>\n

The solution isn\u2019t just locking tools down; it\u2019s giving employees the stack they actually want to use. When IT sanctions modern, visual, AI-assisted apps and invests in onboarding, workers are less likely to go around official channels. Just as important, prioritizing meaningful use cases\u2014like AI automatically transforming meeting notes into tracked action items\u2014drives adoption because it solves real pain points. To that point, employees estimate<\/a> using AI helps reduce their workloads by nearly four hours in a typical workweek.<\/p>\n

The security conversation is evolving too. An NPU doesn\u2019t just accelerate productivity workloads, it also provides investment protection. Industry analysts have identified edge-based AI security as one of the top use cases for NPU-equipped PCs, with vendors already planning to update endpoint security agents to take advantage of local AI acceleration. That means today\u2019s device refresh lays the foundation for tomorrow\u2019s security innovations.<\/p>\n

That said, embedding security<\/a> at the firmware and silicon level still matters. A \u201cbuilt-in, not bolted-on\u201d approach safeguards devices from silicon to cloud, blocking threats before they surface in the hardware, firmware, or software and giving IT control without disrupting employees. And by processing AI workloads directly on the device:<\/p>\n

Sensitive data stays local, rather than flowing through unsanctioned public tools.<\/p>\n

Risky tasks, such as opening email attachments, are contained in hardware-enforced micro-virtual machines (micro-VMs), isolating attacks before they spread.<\/p>\n

IT retains visibility and control, with the ability to remotely find, lock, or erase devices even if the PC is turned off when misplaced, lost, or stolen.<\/p>\n

From Compliance to Competitive Advantage<\/p>\n

With workplace tech still falling short for many employees, it\u2019s clear the promise of innovation hasn\u2019t caught up with reality. The Windows 11 migration paired with the rise of AI PCs gives IT leaders a rare chance to reset. This isn\u2019t about piling on more technology; it\u2019s about outcome-driven, AI-first solutions that eliminate busywork, secure data, and meet the expectations of digital-native workers.<\/p>\n

CIOs should seize this moment to:<\/p>\n

Prioritize employee experience in upgrade decisions. This is a talent retention and management issue.<\/p>\n

Invest in technology with measurable use cases that can automate routine tasks, improve responsiveness, and deliver built-in security for employee productivity and IT efficiencies.<\/p>\n

Align tech choices with generational expectations. The next wave of leaders won\u2019t settle for less.<\/p>\n

The future of work is being driven by younger generations, and their message is clear: give us tech that works, or we\u2019ll work somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve spent my career watching how customers embrace technology to transform the way they work. And right now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[371,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-90935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}