As technology becomes even more entwined in the fabric of organisations, the opportunities for technology executives will increase. Will a CIO’s potential promotion to CEO be as commonplace as the CFO or COO in the next few years? Historically, with a few technology industry exceptions, it is rare for CIOs of organisations to become CEOs. CEOs either come from the profit-making, client side of the business or the financial area. CIOs are generally seen as managing a silo and being a cost centre rather than being a part of business growth.
How can cloud computing change this? Cloud infrastructure has been hyped to be the answer to almost every technology issue and we think it does have great potential. However, will it change the make-up of a CIO and go as far as to alter the way businesses view them enough to take the chair at the top table?
Well, we think that the IT department in a significant number of organisations will transform radically over the next few years. Let’s take universal banks as an example. Why would a global bank build and operate £200m datacentres? It is nothing to do with their core business and has significant financial, personnel and regulatory complexities. They only do it because they have to. They have vast processing requirements and need to support a huge level of increasing demand. Furthermore, new technologies are always breaking through so the equipment, skills and services constantly have to be upgraded and renewed.
Cloud or Utility computing fundamentally changes this model. If computing is seen as another resource to be switched on and off as required (with an associated usage based charging model) then the basic questions to be answered are:
- What is the cost of supply compared with others?
- How reliable, safe and secure is the supply?
- How flexible and appropriate are the providers?
Obviously it is unlikely that all of the major banks’ IT operations would be placed in the cloud, but it will become the exceptions that are not in the cloud rather than the default.
The traditional IT department would then shrink down to very specific IT functions that were not suited to be run elsewhere. Obviously business-focused change and delivery teams will be the core functions and will keep on growing. Another focus of the ‘IT Department 2016’ will be on management of the demand and supply of technology with vendors. Infrastructure IT will become a relationship management and negotiation function requiring people to change their skillset radically or a different set of resources altogether. The emphasis will be on finding the most appropriate execution venue with external suppliers for an application rather than building the disk or server farm to house it.
So how will this impact the CIO and their future career direction?
- The move to utility computing will enable CIOs to focus more or real business value and change.
- CIOs will have to be even more business-orientated, managing external suppliers and their internal customers.
- CIOs are less likely to be dismissed as ‘techies’ as they will no longer manage large technology-led departments & datacentres.
- They will be more involved in the strategic future of organisations as the commodity aspects fall away
The modern CIO is already on this road and the future will further embed IT into the backbone of firms.
However, being an essential part of the fabric of an organisation is not enough in itself to get the leading role. Other aspects which are common to CEOs are needed such as the ability to have an external focus, international or overseas experience and proven business experience and qualifications. The business sector also matters – technology & manufacturing organisations currently have many more CIO to CEO promotions than financial services, for instance. But there can be little doubt that the impact of cloud could play a small but important part in ensuring that more CIOs become CEOs in the future.