With the research showing growth and transformation are the top priorities for their organisations, this puts technology leaders and the exploitation of data capabilities at the heart of digital business agendas. The research also found that data analytics was the area where technology leaders expected their investments to grow the fastest, and is only behind cybersecurity for where the most technology investment is going in the coming year. Members of the Technology Leaders Agenda 2021 advisory panel of CIOs and CTOs said that after years of hype around AI, innovations in the data ecosystem had finally reached enterprise maturity. As such, it was no surprise that AI and automation initiatives are increasingly being implemented. "AI and automation are now solidly delivering the use cases and value promised three years ago," says Nadine Thomson, global CTO at MediaCom.