From getting your arms around all the data your company owns to getting more bang for your business’s buck, CIOs are facing a number of pressures and challenges these days—and they’re only mounting.

I recently sat down with five of the most revered IT leaders of the past three decades—Domo Enterprise Advisory Board members Phil Fasano, John Leggate, Tony Scott, Esat Sezer, and Mahvash Yazdi, who possess more than 100 years of combined experience as global CIOs at some of the world’s largest organizations—and not only got their takes on what they see as the biggest challenges for CIOs, but how they would go about tackling them if they were calling the shots.

Challenge #1 – Overcoming Data Distress

According to IDC, the size of the global datasphere (i.e. the amount of data society generates, uses, and retains) will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to more than 175 ZB by 2025—a fivefold increase.

That’s a dramatic jump. Unfortunately, many IT leaders are dealing with the situation in a feeble manner, said Phil Fasano.

“Most companies are wallowing in data, thinking they’ve got to create massive, proprietary data projects that are going to solve everything,” said the former CIO of AIG and Kaiser Permanente. “Such in-house projects just give you basic insight about the data you own. You can get a lot further if you partner.”

Colony American Finance partnered with Domo at the end of 2015 and is reaping the benefits.

“From a head count perspective, Colony is probably one-third the size of its closest competitor,” said Matthew March, former CIO of Colony American Finance, “but it does twice as much volume as that competitor.”

Challenge #2 – Breaking Down Silos

While 97% of organizations are currently undertaking—or planning to undertake—digital transformation initiatives, integration challenges are hindering efforts for 84% of organizations.

That was the key finding of a report released earlier this year on the state of IT. And that’s a problem, if you ask Tony Scott.

“You’ve absolutely got to create or adopt systems that help you comply with the law and still help you get the job done that you’re trying to do,” said the former CIO of Microsoft, the Walt Disney Company, and the U.S. Government.

Scott’s solution?

“I’d look to Domo,” he said, “because with Domo, you don’t have to do a heavy lift and shift of all these legacy applications to get at the data to create the new business processes and the visibility you want to have across the organization.”

There isn’t a long waiting period, either. Said Bart Butler, Chief Innovation Office, European Wax Center: “Domo came in and connected to our legacy data system within four or five minutes. We were off and running in no time.”

For three more challenges CIOs are facing—and how to solve them—click here.