32,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Serie: Wiley CIO
- Sprache: Englisch
Essential reading for IT professionals with aspirations toward the top IT spot, and for sitting CIOs looking to refine their mobile, social and cloud strategies and knowledge The definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT, Straight to the Top, Second Edition reveals how the role of the CIO is changing due to major trends associated with consumer and enterprise products and technologies driving new mobile solutions in today's organizations; cloud computing and the move away from controlled / internally managed data centers to pay as you use and elastic cloud infrastructure and application services; and the impact social media is having on today's complex organizations. Author Gregory S. Smith expertly coaches existing and aspiring CIOs on building the requisite skills through his observations and experience as a veteran CIO with more than twenty-five years of experience leading IT teams and delivering complex technical solutions in the information technology field. * An invaluable guide to help information technology and business professionals recognize the qualities, skills, and expertise necessary to attain the role of a CIO or enhance the skills for sitting CIOs * Equips IT managers, CIOs, and CTOs to strategically plan their career moves * Packed with encouragement, advice, and essential skills for aspiring and sitting CIOs * Features interviews with leading IT professionals, CIOs, and executive recruiting professionals Providing an organized and comprehensive view of the CIO job and its important role in modern organizations, Straight to the Top, Second Edition equips sitting CIOs and CIO candidates with the strategies and knowledge necessary to be successful in the new business normal - a mobile, social and cloud-based world, and how to provide technology leadership as a world-class CIO.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 327
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
Ähnliche
Contents
Cover
Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
The Target Audience
The Approach
Acknowledgments
Part One: Key Change Drivers and Trends Impacting the CIO Role Today
Chapter 1: Why the Role of the CIO Continues to Change
The State of the CIO
How Important Are Core Technology Skills?
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 2: Technologies and Trends Driving Today's IT Innovation
Follow the Money
The Major Technology Trends Driving Change
Predictions for the Future
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 3: IT Standards and Governance and the Impact of Consumer Devices
IT Governance and Its Benefits
How IT Trends Affect IT Governance
Portfolio Management of IT
The IT Strategic Plan
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 4: Service Level Agreements
Service in the Age of the Customer
Service Level Agreements
Annual Staff and Customer Surveys
Vendor Scorecarding
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 5: Today's CIO
Gaps in Expectations between CIOs and CEOs and Other C-Level Executives
Educating the C-Suite
Creating a High-Performing IT Team through Education
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Part Two: The Modern-Day CIO
Chapter 6: What Executive Recruiters Are Looking for, from Consulting Experience to Leadership Skills
How to Get Noticed
Leading Generation Y and Mentoring
Tomorrow's Leadership Skills
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 7: Cloud Computing Strategies and Risks
A Cloud Computing Overview
Growth Trends and Costs
The Security and Risks of Cloud Computing
Integrating with the Cloud
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 8: The Consumerization of IT
Consumer Devices Permeate the Corporate World
Growth Trends for Mobile Computing
Increasing Costs and Security
Mobile Device Management
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 9: Social Media Changes Everything
Social Media Categories
Social Media Titans
Social Media Are the World's Reporters
Businesses Using Social Media
The Risks of Social Media
Facebook Fatigue?
What's Next in Social Media
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Notes
Chapter 10: What's after the CIO Role?
Career Next Steps
What Did I Do to Prepare?
Recommendations
Conclusion
Notes
About the Author
Index
Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons is the oldest independent publishing company in the United States. With offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, Wiley is globally committed to developing and marketing print and electronic products and services for our customers' professional and personal knowledge and understanding.
The Wiley CIO series provides information, tools, and insights to IT executives and managers. The products in this series cover a wide range of topics that supply strategic and implementation guidance on the latest technology trends, leadership, and emerging best practices.
Titles in the Wiley CIO series include:
Cover image: © 77studio/iStockphoto Cover design: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. First edition published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in 2006. Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Smith, Gregory S., 1963– Straight to the top : CIO leadership in a mobile, social, and cloud-based world / Gregory S. Smith. — Second Edition. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-118-39003-0 (hbk.) — ISBN 978-1-118-42079-9 (ePDF) — ISBN 978-1-118-59564-0 (Mobi) — ISBN 978-1-118-41746-1 (ePub) — ISBN 978-1-118-63422-6 (O-book) 1. Chief information officers — Vocational guidance. 2. Information technology— Management—Vocational guidance. 3. Information resources management—Vocational guidance. I. Title. HD30.2.S629 2013 658.4'038—dc23 2012048297
To all of the IT professionals—inside organizations and within supporting vendors—who make this industry so exciting. Keep driving innovation and change every day.
Also, to the executive recruiters who are so often instrumental in the recruitment and placement of today's CIOs and supporting executives. Thanks for all your hard work.
And, finally, to my family for their continued support and patience during the research and writing of this book.
PREFACE
For the past decade and a half, I have had the luxury of serving as the chief information officer (CIO) for some wonderful global organizations. Before accepting my first CIO post at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), I had the privilege of serving as a principal consultant for one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, as an information technology (IT) director at a Fortune 200 financial services firm, as a defense IT consultant, and as an adjunct professor at one of the top 20 American universities.
The role of IT has been changing for decades and is changing still. Looking back, I reflect on the days of centralized computing on mainframes, client-server technology, web 1.0, telecommunications advances, and mobile computing gains—most recently, the significant advances in smart phone and tablet technologies. Today we have new drivers for change. We are heavily leveraging cloud technology, social networking, advanced telecommunication and wireless technologies, the virtualization of everything technical, and the advancement of consumer devices in the corporate world. As a result, the role of the CIO in any organization continues to be demanding and requires solid technical skills, business acumen, and exceptional communication skills to properly succeed.
Preparing for the CIO role takes careful planning. Staying in that role takes continued education in modern technologies, trust from your staff and other C-level executives, and the ability to deliver results at the lowest cost possible.
In 2006, I published Straight to the Top: Becoming a World-Class CIO. The book was intended to serve two main goals: (1) to help nonexecutive IT professionals plan their ascension to the top echelons of IT and, if lucky, their appointment to the CIO role, and (2) to assist sitting CIOs with best-practice information and shared knowledge from a variety of seasoned professionals (CIOs, executive recruiters, and top IT advisory research firms) to become better IT leaders.
Straight to the Top: CIO Leadership in a Mobile, Social, and Cloud-based World continues the journey of educating today's IT leaders and tomorrow's successors. Thus, my goal in this book is to help sitting CIOs, aspiring CIOs, and other business professionals to understand the drivers, complexities, and positioning of IT in the business world today so that as an industry and as leaders in that industry, we become better.
The Target Audience
Straight to the Top: CIO Leadership in a Mobile, Social, and Cloud-based World is targeted at IT and business professionals who aspire to land senior management positions in IT or who desire to become top IT resources in their organizations. The book expands on the first edition and focuses on technology and business drivers that are changing the landscape of IT today.
Academic institutions that offer programs and degrees (undergraduate and graduate) in information systems, computer science, and IT management, along with their faculty, should benefit from this book by using it to augment the content of their courses with real-world skills that can propel their students to reach the upper echelons of technology management.
Today's successful technology professionals need to have solid IT acumen, business skills, strong communication skills, and a willingness to embrace the changing landscape in business and technology. Mobile, social, and cloud solutions are here to stay. They are getting more mature and are permeating the marketplace even as I write this. The nonbusiness consumer is having a profound effect on technology in organizations today. Trends in consumer technology and social media are blurring the lines between traditional IT management and governance and the frameworks required today. They are requiring top IT leaders to take another look and reshape their organizations to accommodate these technologies and drivers.
Straight to the Top: CIO Leadership in a Mobile, Social, and Cloud-based World describes why the role of the CIO is changing and what to expect in the future. It introduces topics beyond those in the first edition to help IT professionals govern their technical environments. The readers will get an expanded view from a diverse group of executive recruiters to see exactly what qualities, skills, and experiences quality search firms are seeking in CIO candidates. I compare and contrast the data in the first edition with the data in this edition. This book explores in more depth the social and technical drivers for IT change, including social media, mobile computing, and cloud technologies; it recommend how to navigate the C-suite; and it concludes with what's next for CIOs after mastering the technology leadership role.
The Approach
The information and recommendations presented in this book come from a variety of sources: (1) advisory research and case studies, (2) interviews with a diverse range of CIO experts and seasoned IT leaders, (3) interviews with a variety of executive recruiting firms, and (4) my own experiences in both planning for my first CIO role and serving as a CIO for more than a decade. The expert CIOs surveyed for this book come from a diverse group of organizations that represent a large cross-section of industries and sectors, including academia, nonprofit, retail, technology services, pharmaceuticals, and financial services. The CIO and executive recruiting expertise and input are derived from regional, national, and international experience and depth.
Part I focuses on the drivers and changes affecting information technology and the role of the CIO. Expanding on the first edition, I examine additional best practices of governance, standards, and service levels and explore how to interact, advise, and educate other C-level executives in the pursuit of IT excellence.
Part II builds on the drivers and recommendations discussed in the first half of the book and homes in on several key topics relevant to today, including cloud computing, the consumerization of IT, and social media and networking. The readers will get an updated view from top executive recruiters on what they are looking for when hiring for senior IT leadership positions today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I'd like to thank the folks at Forrester Research, specifically George Colony, for his continued support of research and IT advisory services that greatly contributed to the success of this book.
I'd also like to thank my CIO peer group of IT leaders and executives for their contributions and insights. Their input lends legitimacy and credibility by providing real-world examples of challenges and solutions to today's complex IT and business environment.
In addition, the information and insight provided by my IT executive recruiting professionals is priceless. I hope it helps the readers with their next career moves.
Finally, but with no less importance, thanks to my editors, Tim Burgard and Stacey Rivera, at John Wiley & Sons and to the many literary professionals on the Wiley team who helped bring this book to fruition.
PART ONE
Key Change Drivers and Trends Impacting the CIO Role Today
CHAPTER 1
Why the Role of the CIO Continues to Change
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
—Arthur C. Clark1
I am honored to have the opportunity to write the second edition of Straight to the Top for several reasons. First, the information technology (IT) market continues to be robust and a constantly changing canvas that allows vendors, consumers, and IT professionals the opportunity to paint their masterpieces with different technical tools and colors.
Second, my editors at John Wiley & Sons and I saw the market opportunity to update the original text, and they had confidence in me to write the succeeding volume in a way that would assist and educate IT and business professionals on the rise.
Third, I am concerned that the chief information officer (CIO) role may be evolving to a dangerously nontechnical role that relies more on business acumen and less on IT experience and knowledge. A less technical CIO role has been a topic in a variety of media outlets for years now, and the volume seems to be rising. In a recent interview with a major media player, the journalist asked me my thoughts on whether the CIO role still needed to be technical. The interviewer suggested rotating other C-level executives through the CIO role on a six-month basis as a way to interject other business knowledge into the role. He indicated that some organizations were experimenting with this unique technique.
When asked whether I supported this process, I answered the question with a resounding no. I went on to suggest that it wasn't a good idea to extend that concept and rotate the CIO through other C-level positions, including chief financial officer (CFO) and chief marketing officer (CMO). Can you imagine what would happen to a CIO rotating through a CFO role during the certification of year-end financials—especially if there are issues and audit management comments? The answer is the possibility of prison.
Regarding the skills that CIOs need today, let me be crystal clear. The CIO must have technical knowledge (practical and theoretical) in addition to solid business skills in order to be able to succeed in today's complex environments and beyond. I have met many CIOs who are well received in the marketplace and who are accomplished in the delivery of several large and complex projects but who lack the technical skills and the trust of their own staffs. In the first edition of this book, I cited a CIO research report finding that more than 40 percent of IT staff members surveyed thought that their CIOs were not technically savvy enough about their companies' technologies to lead their respective departments.2 Today's CIOs need to be technically savvy and business savvy.
Let me be crystal clear with my next statement as well. CIOs throughout this and the next decade need to be IT leaders with tremendous business and technical skills. They need to understand wireless technologies, security, cloud computing, social networking, virtualization, and business intelligence in addition to the “softer” skills like vendor and contract management, communication, financial management, and IT governance. I still believe that those experiences—combined with the right academic mix of a bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or information systems and a master's degree in business—form the killer combination. I'll explore this topic more in Chapter 6, where regional, national, and international executive recruiters weigh in on the skills and experience needed by today's IT leaders.
IT leaders who have great business acumen and experience will undoubtedly need to rely on their subordinates or outside consulting experts for technical skills and IT know-how, but business-only CIOs run the risk of relying on them too much. Concepts in IT networking and operations as well as mobile and cloud technologies—including significant changes in integration technology, software development, enterprise applications, and security—are all fairly technical components inside IT. I believe that CIOs with solid technical grounding are better able to rally their IT departments, gain their respect and trust, and appropriately build a successful multiyear strategy that includes a comprehensive and shared discussion with their subordinates, but not one that is dictated by them due to the CIOs' lack of technical grounding.
An analogy that I used in the first edition stated it clearly and looked at the question of expertise from a different perspective and discipline. Does a CFO need to be well grounded in both financial management and accounting principles? Undoubtedly, yes. Similarly, the CIO needs to be technical in his or her role. Thus, CIO leaders today need to be the full package: savvy in technology and seasoned business professionals.
Since I last penned Straight to the Top, I've been busy expanding my career, building my knowledge on the many changing technologies affecting IT executives today, and learning more about the businesses of the organizations in which I've had the honor of serving. These three accomplishments in continuing education are no small feat. As of this writing, social media is alive and well and becoming more and more important to the CIO strategy every day. No longer is social media just a way for staff members who are bored out of their minds at work to waste time chatting with friends online. Facebook, Twitter, and other technologies are vibrant, are expanding at a mind-boggling pace, and are causing a major paradigm shift in IT strategies today.
In addition, the cloud is no longer an experiment, but rather a viable business model and technical opportunity for organizations looking to roll out applications faster and with more fault tolerance and expandability. Consumer devices are invading organizations at an alarming rate, multiplying with vendor and model variations, and providing throbbing headaches for IT professionals across the globe who adopt them. Old-school technocrats are used to controlled environments and systems. Modern-day CIOs need to embrace and manage a changing technology that includes tablets, new smartphones, social networking (including via mobile), and collaboration in the cloud. These are all examples of disruptive technologies that are maturing and causing CIOs to rethink their strategies and governance models.
Consumer tools like Apple's iPad, Google's Nexus 7, Amazon's Kindle, Microsoft's Surface tablet, and Samsung's Galaxy are pushing the limits of tablet computing and moving more IT organizations into a decentralized heterogeneous mobile environment. This, of course, is in addition to the plethora of personal digital assistants (PDAs) on the market and the behind-the-scenes war of the mobile device operating systems. IT standards and governance are being tested every day with new technology releases and consumer adoption of these devices. Bring your own device (BYOD) to work is having a profound effect on IT departments today. I'll have more to say about that in a subsequent chapter, but the bottom line is that the consumerization of IT is happening, and we can't stop it. Those who put their heads in the sand and ignore this trend may be hailed as security hawks, but they won't be loved by the employees of the organization, many of whom are members of Generations X and Y.
Gone are the days of Internet Explorer–only or –dominant browsers, BlackBerry-only business-grade smartphones, and the fat personal computer that stored all programs, data, and processing power on a synchronized platform of local client machines and centralized servers. Nope—we're in for a new ride now. Organizations are deploying cloud-based and mobile applications at breakneck speeds. The integration of data between cloud technologies and on-premise systems is also changing, adding layers of complexity, especially in terms of stability and security.
I recently spoke at a CIO event in Canada about the changing IT landscape and the drivers that are pushing CIOs to reevaluate their strategies. Although many CIOs in the audience communicated a solid understanding of these drivers—with several able to discuss their strategies in support of mobile, cloud, and social technology—there were a couple who had not developed strategies in one or two of the shifting drivers affecting the IT industry. This perplexed me a bit, but then it hit me months later, when I was in a completely different geographical part of the world.
CIOs have been trying for so long to control their environments through classic governance models with nonflexible standards that some of them have actually been able to stave off disruptive technologies likes the ones affecting the marketplace today. I've spoken to many CIOs who block social media web sites from their staff members at work, block access to personal e-mail, don't allow online shopping during business hours, and don't support or allow personal devices on their networks. For the sake of firm control, these CIOs have sacrificed opportunities for both professional and business growth.
Many of the technologies driving change and innovation today in the marketplace may help our teams be more collaborative, open, and remote or mobile in the goals of driving revenue and improving customer support. Thus, it's time for today's IT executives to adapt or die and for the next generation of IT leaders to pressure the existing leadership to improve.
I realized shortly after the conversations in Canada that CIOs in India are not as fluent with the new integration technologies that enable cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-premise integration. In China, CIOs are light on virtualization technology usage and strategies. Technology is changing fast enough that different parts of the globe are better than others at adopting newer strategies and technologies. And in many cases, slower adoption is a form of risk mitigation.
The State of the CIO
A recent CIO magazine article posed the question of whether IT is facing a leadership crisis. According to Aaron Cowan, who leads recruiting for the executive search firm Marlin Hawk, “The talent exists in the market. The world creates the leaders it needs.”3
Next-generation CIOs will come from a variety of sources, including the following two:
According to Forrester Research's Khalid Kark, “We're starting to see more and more CIOs who are not traditional technologists. We estimate anywhere from 60 to 65 percent of CIOs still have a strong technology background.” And Mark Polansky of executive search firm Korn Ferry stated, “There are some non-IT people who become CIOs. They are the exceptions and not the rule.”4
IT resources in the United States, sometimes in the higher ranks, are not as plentiful as they once were. Computer science programs are cranking out fewer top candidates than they did a decade ago. According to Katrina Lane, chief technology officer (CTO) of Caesar's Entertainment, an $8.8 billion casino, the company is having a difficult time bringing on board several senior IT staff. Because of a difficult economy and reduced mobility for relocation, she explained, “they can't get rid of their houses, and you end up having a smaller pool of people to draw from.” Companies that can't find the right top IT talent may have a harder time growing. According to Tim Campos, director of IT at Facebook, “We can't hire fast enough. It's very difficult for us to find the best talent.”5
The most recent research from CIO magazine, drawn from the annual State of the CIO survey, found that 82 percent of the 596 IT leaders surveyed “expect the global recession will have a negative impact on their organization within the next three years.”6 Given the numerous public attacks and theft of data in both small and large organizations, 69 percent are expecting a security-related issue within the next three years.
Fewer CIOs report to their chief executive officers (CEO), a downward trend in the past four years; as of 2012, only 38 percent were reporting directly to the CEO (see Exhibit 1.1). In addition, CIO magazine reported that CIOs reporting to the CFOs is on the rise, up slightly to 23 percent.7
Exhibit 1.1 Strategic Access
To me and to many of the colleagues I've discussed the reporting trend with, the results are indicative of stress caused by the end of the U.S. recession, the start of a recession in Europe, a slowdown in China's growth, and the effects of interrelated commerce across the globe. I've been through four recessions in my career. A consistent outcome of each one was more reliance on the CFO for managing the organization's investments and expenses. I see no difference now in the driver for this year's trend of an increasing number of CIOs reporting to the CFOs.
IT organizations are increasingly under pressure to deliver during uneven economic times. The perceptions of their business stakeholders have come into play more with this year's State of the CIO survey. Even though the strategic contributions from most CIOs have grown in recent years, “57 percent of surveyed CIOs believe they are perceived as service providers or technology collaborators.” Only 7 percent are perceived as “game changers,” 30 percent as “IT partners,” 27 percent as “service providers,” and 21 percent as a cost center providing no appreciated enterprise value or misunderstood as a cost center as a whole (see Exhibit 1.2). An interesting anecdote is that CIOs reporting to CEOs is highly correlated with the CIOs being perceived as business savvy. Those lucky executives make up 60 percent of the technology leaders, compared to 38 percent with less perceived business value outside IT.8
Despite all this bad news, there is a bit of good news: 66 percent of the IT leaders surveyed sit on the management committee (see Exhibit 1.3).9 Tenure is also on the rise, with an average tenure of five years and four months.10
So what does this all mean for the future of IT and CIO leadership trends? According to the survey, the CIOs felt much better about their ability to meet their current year goals: 63 percent reported having a good year, 37 percent reported a challenge, and 1 percent were not sure. Regarding the organization's business outlook, the statistics were practically reversed: 65 percent saw a challenging year, and only 34 percent had a positive attitude for a good year (see Exhibit 1.4).11
Exhibit 1.2 The Way Others See You
Exhibit 1.3 Do You Have a Seat at the Table?
Exhibit 1.4 What the Future Holds
Source:www.cio.com, December 15, 2011, and January 1, 2012
How Important Are Core Technology Skills?
Keen IT skills are very important today in order to be successful as a CIO. Some of the research in the market today indicates that technology skills for CIOs rank as a much lower priority than business acumen and communication skills, which are at the top of the list of must-have skills. Many CIOs whom I've spoken with over the years and encountered in peer meetings, at conferences, and on conference calls still do not appear to have sufficient knowledge of many of the components driving IT today; they appear to rely heavily on their trusted subordinates to give them advice and help them make technical decisions.
This was evident in my recent trip and presentation to a group of CIOs in North America. Although the majority of the IT leaders I spoke with had solid business plans and were investing in many of the technologies that are rapidly penetrating into the marketplace today, a few had no real strategy for leveraging technologies like cloud computing or social media and still relied heavily on subordinates to do the IT heavy lifting.
During two other speaking engagements—one in South Asia, and the other in China—I also noted a lack of technical knowledge associated with today's trending technologies, including cloud computing, cloud integration technology, social media, and, in some cases, virtualization. Several of the Indian and Chinese CTOs and CIOs I spoke with were unfamiliar with new cloud-based integration technologies from recognizable vendors such as Dell, Software AG, and IBM. What became obvious to me as I researched this book is that the adoption rate of leading technologies does vary greatly across the globe, and it is often correlated in some way to technology spending trends in regions and countries. North America and Europe typically lead the globe on technology innovation, but that landscape is starting to change.
Relying solely on technical subordinates can be a dangerous decision for today's IT leaders, mainly because CIO subordinates will in many ways determine how successful the CIO is. What if a subordinate ill advises a CIO and the outcome of a major initiative is a flop? Worse yet, what if revenue or customer support is affected? This can sometimes result in the CIO losing his or her job. As a CIO, I can't imagine leading a team of IT professionals without having solid technical skills. I would never put my career in the hands of subordinates by relying on them to make decisions on strategy and technology that I am responsible for. CIOs need to have modern-day core technology skills and experience in addition to many other “soft” skills, including business acumen in the sectors in which their organizations reside. CIOs need to be the whole package.
In the first edition, I noted the following important IT skills for CIOs:
Applications and architecture alternativesDatabase management systemsNetworking and wireless technologiesCollaboration systemsSecurityAs a result of spending forecasts and the 2012 State of the CIO survey of IT leaders, the technical skills to have now are the following:
Cloud computing and virtualizationIntegration technologies (middleware)Mobile devices and wireless technologiesTelecommunicationsA renewed focus on security—including data loss and preventionBig data, analytics, and the integration of business intelligenceSocial media and networkingIn the first edition, I highlighted an architecture commonly found inside an organization's data center or maintained by a hosting partner. Exhibit 1.5 displays the components that were likely to be found in a data center six or more years ago. To fully understand this architecture, CIOs need to understand networking concepts; database knowledge and integration techniques; clustering; and operating system scale and performance. This architecture is still used by technology professionals today.
Fast forward to today. The architectures of today include many components used six years ago, but they expand to include additional integration technologies and often rely on external public and private cloud computing solution providers and virtualization. A common change to the architecture depicted in Exhibit 1.5 is the use of virtualization technologies in place of dedicated servers. Virtualization offers many advantages to prior data center and system configuration. Some examples of virtualization technology benefits are (1) a higher utilization of server capacity (density), often resulting in an overall lower total cost of ownership, (2) reduced energy consumption, (3) an increased fault tolerance of server resources, (4) faster provisioning of server resources, and (5) major improvements in disaster recovery planning and execution as a result of being able to replicate data and systems across data centers. More and more CIOs are incorporating cloud computing into their enterprise architectures. I'll discuss cloud computing in much more detail in Chapter 7.
Exhibit 1.5 Sample IT OLTP to Decision Support Architecture
Exhibit 1.6 highlights the complexity and integration between on-premise data centers and cloud provider data centers. This technique also brings in a whole new component of vendor contract negotiation that requires CIOs to focus on system uptime, the provisioning of servers, the use and cost of disk space, service level agreements (SLAs), security, data integration, and penalties for failed SLAs. The more CIOs leverage cloud computing solutions, the more integration that's typically required and the more we need to pay attention to the services and SLAs the cloud vendors provide.
Exhibit 1.6 Cloud/Integration Architecture
Virtualization has also moved from servers to many other networking and client computing devices. It's common for a cloud provider to leverage virtualization technology to provision load balancers, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention devices, and even switches. While virtualization technologies are mature in the data center, they are still evolving on the client side—specifically, the user computer or laptop. The increase in user mobility is pushing the limits on virtualization technologies applied to individual computers, mainly by the requirement to work offline and away from the corporate network. Vendors such as Citrix and EMC/VMWare are making progress solving the offline virtualization need and are expected to reach critical mass with regard to maturity in the next few years.
Exhibit 1.7 is an example of a green IT architecture, in which energy use and server utilization (via higher density) is achieved through virtualization technologies and blade computing. Some SAN disk systems today incorporate smart energy-sensitive technologies built in to automate the migration of data from high-speed, high-energy drives to low-cost, low-energy drives based on usage.
Exhibit 1.7 Sample Green IT Architecture
To round out this introductory chapter, I asked my distinguished CIO/executive panel two questions about the CIO role today and why it has changed in recent years. Their insights and responses are listed in the CIO survey below.
What Did I Do to Prepare?
I started out my career by obtaining an undergraduate degree in computer science with a minor in business from the best program I could get into. It turned out that when I graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park, it had the seventh best computer science program in the United States. In addition, Maryland's business program ranked in the top 25. After working several years as a programmer in a consulting firm, where I proactively shared knowledge with coworkers and worked toward being part of a team effort, I became a team leader, then a manager. Becoming a manager gave me oversight over larger projects and consulting engagements.
