Hyperconverged data center infrastructure is a hot topic. And chief information officers (CIOs) at large enterprises are involved with the transition from traditional architectures to these next-gen data center architectures. But these executives are also balancing their time between technological upheavals and a shifting definition of their roles.

At least 84 percent of top chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed recently by Gartner take responsibility for areas outside traditional IT. Top CIOs reported they are close to an “ideal balance” where more of their focus is on business outcomes rather than IT delivery. Their roles are transitioning from controlling costs and engineering processes to driving revenue and exploiting data.

The findings were part of the 2018 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey. The research firm gathered data from 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and all major industries. For some questions, the survey categorized respondents as either top, typical, or trailing performers in digitalization.

Based on the top CIOs' responses, the "ideal balance" is 56 percent of their work metrics related to things such as revenue growth, business margins, and business strategy, and 44 percent of their focus related to IT delivery.

For 2018, 26 percent of CIOs said their No. 1 priority was growth — to use digitized products and services to drive new forms of revenue, business value, and customer engagement.

Seventy-one percent of the top performers have a separate digital team to help them scale their digitalization efforts. The most common structure for these teams is to report to the CIO. The survey also found that the more mature an enterprise's digital business is, the more likely the CIO will report to the CEO.

Finally, the Gartner survey also found that digital security is becoming more of a priority on the CIO agenda as 35 percent of respondents said they have already invested and deployed some aspect of digital security, and 36 percent are in the process of planning to implement some form of digital security.