The CIO's Maintenance Backlog Is Now a Business Risk
InformationWeek, Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026
Deferred IT maintenance has become a compounding business risk that AI adoption accelerates rather than solves.
Author Syed Ali argues that IT maintenance backlogs - including overdue patches, ownerless devices and integrations, and undocumented configuration changes - have evolved from a technical nuisance into material business risk.
Citing an Uptime Institute survey where 57% of respondents reported outage costs exceeding $100,000, Ali warns AI automation can't fix maintenance debt and actually accelerates its consequences when ownership records are incomplete.
He recommends CIOs shift from tracking task completion to assessing business risk exposure and reporting exposure rather than completion rates.