The Evolving Role of the CIO

Keith GoldenOrange County CIO Roundtable

10 February 2011kgolden@econolite.com

Overview

• Historical background• CIO archetypes• Three roads to (our) disintermediation

– Mobile/Democratization of Technology– Business Process Ownership– Cloud Technology

• Discussion

What Does CIO Stand For?

• Chief Information Officer• Chief Innovation Officer• Chief Integration Officer• Chief Internationalization Officer• Chief Irritation Officer• Career Is Over?

Some of the changes we’ve seen

IBM/BUNCH, Mainframes, Payroll & Billing, Assembly Languages, COBOL,

FORTRAN

• 1960s

DEC & DG Minicomputers, Wang, Financial

Systems, Apple & MS Founded, TRS 80, BBS, XEROX

PARC

• 1970s

PCs, LANs, Token Ring, Dial-Up, ATT

Breakup, Lotus 123, Word Perfect, MAC,

Client/Server

• 1980s

ERP/CRM/BI, MS WinTel, Office, Y2K, Ethernet, Internet,

Java/JS/VB

• 1990s

Globalization, Optimization,.COM Bubble,

Google, Web 2.0, Wireless, Mobile

• 2000s

IT Leadership TransformationDP

Manager

MIS Directo

rVP

Systems

CIO

IT’s senior executive title has changed as IT has grown in importance across the enterprise

CIO Role Defined

“The manager of information systems in the 1980s has to be Superman—retaining his technology cape, but doffing the technical suit for a business suit and becoming one of the chief executives of the firm. The job of Chief Information Officer (CIO)—equal in rank to chief executive and chief financial officers—does not exist today, but the CIO will identify, collect, and manage information as a resource, set corporate information policy and affect all office and distributed systems.” -- William Synott, First National Bank of Boston, 1980

Four Classic CIO Types

Innovator• Focus on product & service development

Business Leader• Focus on alignment with bus strategy & operations

Operational• Focus on delivery, nuts & bolts management

Turnaround Specialist• Focus on rapid, positive change

Source: CIO Magazine

Meanwhile…Back At The Office

CIOs may be expected to be innovators, turnaround specialists, operational

maximizers & business leaders each & every day

IT, Business & Business Strategy

• Doff the technical suit for the business suit… (Synott,1980)

• Ironically, keeping the IT utility running is no longer considered a valuable job skill; it's an expectation. Delivery gets you in the game, Then it becomes what you can add on top of that. (Michael Gerrard, Gartner, 2007)

• Business leaders are looking to IT to drive value across the enterprise…however this will tax IT executives, with whom satisfaction is currently fairly low. (McKinsey & Company, 2010)

Trouble

If you can’t keep the existing applications & infrastructure running, you probably won’t have much time for strategic concerns…

And if you don’t have much time for strategic concerns, you are probably already in trouble…

Conventional Wisdom

• CIOs must:– Align with the business & business strategy– Develop leadership ability & people skills– Break down silos– Anticipate & drive change…“be the change”– “Smart Source”/”Right Source” / Etc.– Cultivate board-level influence– Partner more– Spend less– Deliver, deliver, deliver

Trend #1Mobile/Tech Democratization

• PCs are losing out to mobile phone/tablet platforms*– Computing power– Cloud/Data Ubiquity– Community/Social Media– Cannibalization (of functions from other

products)– Creatives (smartest young engineers are

here)– Competition (still wide open)

• What does this mean for IT & CIOs?* Source: Bye-Bye PCs & Laptops, WSJ, Malone & Hayes, 1/7/2011

Um, thanks…

Trend #2Business Process

• Own the business process or be owned by it?

• The business runs on IT’s platform—IT may dictate business processes (at one extreme) or merely support them (at the other) but who really owns them in the enterprise? – The functional areas themselves?– The functional areas plus IT?– IT?

• CIO as Chief Process Officer*– Really?

*From CIO to Chief Process Officer, F. Abbolhassan

The Customer Is Asking For BP Optimization

From How IT is Managing New Demands, McKinsey & Company Global Survey 2010

Trend #3 Cloud Technology

• 80% of McKinsey respondents are experimenting with Cloud tech; 63% are using it now

• IT users throughout the enterprise are becoming more sophisticated and new cloud apps can be relatively simple to set up initially

• IT vendors—cloud vendors particularly— are increasing selling directly to functional departments

• How important are we if someone else owns the business process and the boxes & wires?

Closing Thought

No dimension of business practice is more dynamic than information technology.

-- Anonymous

Discussion