IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant adoption barrier to 64 percent of emerging technologies, compared with just 4 percent in 2020, according to a new survey from Gartner, Inc. A lack of talent availability was cited far more often than other barriers this year, such as implementation cost (29 percent) or security risk (7 percent).

Talent availability is cited by Gartner as a leading factor inhibiting adoption among all six technology domains—compute infrastructure and platform services, network, security, digital workplace, IT automation and storage and database—included in its 2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap Survey, which provides a peer-based view of the adoption plans of over 100 emerging technologies from 437 IT global organizations in North America, EMEA and APAC over a 12- to 24-month time period.

IT executives cited talent availability as the main adoption risk factor for the majority of IT automation technologies (75 percent) and nearly half of digital workplace technologies (41 percent).

“The ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT talent scarcity, especially for sourcing skills that enable cloud and edge, automation and continuous delivery,” said Yinuo Geng, research vice president at Gartner. “As one example, of all the IT automation technologies profiled in the survey, only 20 percent of them have moved ahead in the adoption cycle since 2020. The issue of talent is to blame here.”