In the first part of the ‘myth’ series we discussed the old myths related to the CIO and IT. The next step of the process is to identify what has changed since the old myth was formed more than 10 years ago. Understanding these changes establishes the context for the new myth.
Based on a discussion with a dozen CIOs at the recent Gartner CIO Leadership Forum, a lot has changed for CIOs and IT in the past 10 years. That is good news, as change requires adjustment and updating the CIOs view of themselves and they stories or myths others hold about them. Here are a few of the items CIOs mentioned have changed over the past decade:
Business expectations for IT have changed as management generations have changed. Ten years ago senior leaders cut their management teeth in the 1970’s era of data processing. Today, senior leaders grew up in an age of re-engineering, the advent of client-server/PC and they led through the introduction of the Internet. They know more, so they expect more from CIOs and IT.
Organizations are flatter with layers of middle management removed through re-engineering. In the past, a hierarchical organization actually helped the CIO control demand for IT services, building individual projects up into significant capital expenditure projects. Today, request come from multiple sources, with shorter time to market requiring CIOs to manage a broader scope of change and a numerous set of smaller projects all of which are mission critical to the organization.
The volume of information 10 years ago bears no resemblance to the information demands of today. 10 years ago information was though of as reports that you got on weekly or monthly basis. Today information is REAL TIME, constant, and growing all the time. This puts the “I” in Chief Information Officer back into play.
IT has become horizontal as it works across business units, products, geographies and functions. This is a change from the departmental applications and islands of automation that predated the advent of the Internet.
IT has become more business process focused over the past 10 years. This is true as six out of ten (60%) of CIOs say that improving business process is a top business expectation of IT. Why the change over the past 10 years? Simple, the change is because as IT applications covered more business processes changing those business processes requires involving IT.
Complexity has increased dramatically. The islands of automation from 10 years ago or more have all been filled in, integrated and interconnected. There are more pieces to the puzzle and more complexity to boot.
While systems have become more integrated and complex, technologies have disintegrated from the mainframe – single point of operation – to the networked device (PC, Server, etc). Where the CIO of the past could reach out and touch 90% of their processing capacity in a single box, today much of that capacity is out in the network or virtual data center.
Security has moved from an issue of controlling access to the DP room to protecting the IP for the entire company. Security has also grown asymmetric in nature where the enterprise cost of protection dwarfs the intruder’s cost to create a security breach.
Globalization was non-existent in IT 10 years ago, not enterprises and CIOs face a global marketplace for customers, suppliers and partners. This means that the CIO cannot remain focused on a narrow field of view – domestic technology – but needs to take a broader view and has more choice in provisioning technology and services.
No comments:
Post a Comment