New research examining enterprise IT priorities for Fortune 500 CIOs and CTOs shows that social media remains firmly at the bottom of the to-do list.

According to Sierra Ventures’ new report, ‘Seizing Opportunity: The Transition from Legacy to Innovation in Enterprise IT’, CIOs and CTOs are wearing ‘multiple hats’ when it comes to keeping up with changing technology advances and maintaining legacy systems, and are focused on discovering how to incorporate new technologies into core business to outsmart the competition.

But for most of those surveyed, this does not mean leveraging the power of social. In fact, the most important areas for IT innovation were cited as follows:

• 32% big data
• 32% mobile devices
• 24% cloud computing
• 12% social media

Interestingly, when asked about the biggest impediment to IT innovation, the CIOs said:

• 32% skills shortage
• 29% maintenance of legacy systems
• 25% new efforts with limited clear goals
• 16% support of new technology for enterprise

These are textbook complaints about the implementation of enterprise technology, cited time and again especially in a social enterprise context. Yet with 52% claiming that the demand for better solutions is the business driver for innovation, it’s striking that so many companies are overlooking the potential of enterprise social IT. It’s an area set to prosper in the coming months, so it will be interesting to see how these findings match up to those a year from now.