Chief Information Officer - Information Technology

Information Technology

The prominence of the CIO position has risen greatly as information, and the information technology that drives it, has become an increasingly important part of the modern organization. The CIO may be a member of the executive committee of an organization, and/or may often be required to engage at board level depending on the nature of the organization and its operating structure and governance environment. No specific qualification are intrinsic of the CIO position, though the typical candidate may have expertise in a number of technological fields - computer science, software engineering, or information systems. Many candidates have Master of Business Administration or Master of Science in Management degrees. More recently CIOs' leadership capabilities, business acumen and strategic perspectives have taken precedence over technical skills. It is now quite common for CIOs to be appointed from the business side of the organization, especially if they have project management skills.

In 2007 a survey amongst CIOs by CIO magazine in the UK discovered that their top 10 concerns were: people leadership, managing budgets, business alignment, infrastructure refresh, security, compliance, resource management, managing customers, managing change and board politics.

In 2010, Gartner Executive Programs conducted a global CIO survey and received responses from 2,014 CIOs from 50 countries and 38 industries. Gartner reported that the survey results indicated that the top ten technology priorities for CIOs for 2011 were cloud computing, virtualization, mobile technologies, IT management, business intelligence, networking, voice and data communications, enterprise applications, collaboration technologies, infrastructure, and Web 2.0.

Typically, a CIO is involved with driving the analysis and re-engineering of existing business processes, identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, reshaping the enterprise's physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise's knowledge resources. Many CIOs head the enterprise's efforts to integrate the Internet into both its long-term strategy and its immediate business plans. CIO's are often tasked with either driving or heading up crucial IT projects which are essential to the strategic and operational objectives of an organisation. A good example of this would be the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system which typically has wide-ranging implications for most organizations. The CIO is evolving into a role where he/she is creating and monitoring business value from IT assets, to the point where corporate strategist Chris Potts suggests in the novel FruITion that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) be replaced with Chief Internal Investments Officer (CIIO).

Another way that the CIO role is changing is an increased focus on service management. As SaaS, IaaS, BPO and other more flexible value delivery techniques are brought into organizations the CIO usually functions as a 3rd party manager for the organization. In essence, a CIO in the modern organization is required to possess business skills and the ability to relate to the organization as a whole, as opposed to being a technological expert with limited functional business expertise. The CIO position is as much about anticipating trends in the market place with regards to technology as it is about ensuring that the business navigates these trends through expert guidance and proper strategic IT planning that is aligned to the corporate strategy of the organization.