The changing role of the CIO has become an almost constant theme in information and communications (ICT) media in the last couple of years, with occasional echoes to be found even in mainstream business publications from Forbes to the Financial Times. A good part of the reason, of course, is the apparently threatening combination of smart personal and handheld devices and cloud computing. It looks like the perfect tsunami.
But is it? If we have learned one thing in the ICT world over the past decades (and surely we have learned at least one) it is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some sort of corollary or other law, not excluding Murphy’s, is that several IT generations will continue to function alongside each other. The various new editions and half-editions of Windows would offer the perfect example and out there in the industrial fastnesses there are undoubtedly green screen DOS applications quietly churning away on some specialist tasks.
So the proponents of the cloud or consumerisation paradigm shifts are absolutely entitled to shout of revolutionary change. But another more cautious or perhaps objective view might welcome the progress while suggesting that cloud is just a logical extension of virtualisation and the even older server-based computing architecture-just written very large indeed. As for smart phones, the modern Three As (Anywhere, Anytime, Any device) absolutely make for terrifically valuable technology input into social and working lives and power to the people. But in ICT terms, apart from exponential proliferation and therefore loads on networks and data centres and databases, it is still just remote access. Better, tougher to control to the higher corporate standards, but in the end just remote access.
Undaunted
Most if not all of the CIO voices ComputerScope has heard in the past year are not in the least daunted by cloud or bring your own device (BYOD) or indeed data volumes or any of the other media-vaunted challenges to ICT and the CIO as its leader in the organisation. They tend to focus in a most non-guru like way on ‘keeping the lights on’, with the phrase now standing for software systems and applications more than flashing LED indicators, and universally by far the most common term in their responses is ‘the business’.
But none of them have ever been sanguine or complacent about what might be coming down the track. The most common thing, with a little bit of re-reading in our recent archives, is that they were not generally worried about technology and related issues. They shared the overall business concerns about the future in their own business sectors, and activities of their organisations or state agencies in non-commercial spheres, and about the constant challenge of quality with cost control, efficiency with user-friendly interfaces and systems.
That is in many respects confirmed by the Accenture report earlier this year, "Reimagining Enterprise IT for an Uncertain Future". The Institute for High Performance throws into focus the key insight that organisations and their CIOs (and indeed all of the C-suite) have to prepare for multiple possible futures. They have to learn to think about and prepare on a continuous basis for alternative futures.
Forces at work
Accenture Ireland’s Hilary O’Meara, head of technology, explains that it comes down to a question of converging forces that have been identified by the study, all of which are likely to contribute in some degree to the future that any CIO has to cope with. Those forces are worth listing as food for thought for all senior managers:
- The Cultural impact of consumer ICT
- Global, Inter-based competition
- Vulnerable technology and information
- Increasing pressure for quality and efficiency
- The rise of data-drive decision making
- New approaches to innovation
- The impact of geopolitics and state regulation
- The possibility of disruptive disasters
"We are all at a crossroads in ICT in many respects. About a fifth or so of the CIOs responding to the survey in that research said they did not know what the CIO role would be in five years’ time. I suspect an even higher proportion of our ICT leaders would say something similar. We know, or think we know, that the future will be radically different. We just don’t know in what ways. We may think of technology and cloud or Big Data or BYOD, but in fact economic or political or even legal uncertainty on a global scale may be far more influential," O’Meara believes.
"The other key point is that this uncertainty and coping with the potential impact of those forces is a joint responsibility. The CIO, IT director or whatever the title, has to be fully aligned in strategic thinking and planning with the CEO, the CFO, the COO and very commonly today the chief marketing officer if the organisation has one," she said. "It is now not uncommon for the COO to be combine with combined the role of the CIO, especially in sectors like financial services or media and others where the ICT infrastructure is directly comparable to the production function in manufacturing. We are talking about the leadership and strategic planning management of the business. A question like ‘what will this business look like in five years?’ or indeed ‘what business will this business be in’ then is not an ICT issue, although there will be very few organisations where another generation of ICT will not be part of the answer."
Strategist and prophet
Since the poor CIO (some of them feel like that) has to be strategist and prophet, as well as keeping those lights on, one clear part of the role is and will always be clarity of thinking in sorting the value from the hype. Some advances in ICT are just trends, some will rightly invoke ‘let’s do it now’ responses from businesses that are alert and agile enough to stay ahead of the curves. "It is the CIO’s job to translate the technology in the marketplace into practicable choices for the organisation," Hilary O’Meara says. "That demands leadership and often personal assertiveness. But that is where the worth of the individual and the role get proven."
A refreshingly different view is that of John Hampson, CIO of the Ardagh Group, our home-grown multinational. From its origins as the Irish Glass Bottle Company in 1932, Ardagh has grown in the last decade through expansion and acquisition, notably €1.7 billion for the Impress Group last year. It operates in 25 countries globally, largely in Europe to date, and employs over 14,000 people. Its 88 facilities produce over 25 billion containers annually. "I believe I know pretty well exactly what my role will be in five years’ time. It will be different in lots of ways but the core will be the same-delivering more efficient ICT services to the business."
Acknowledging that directly manufacturing tangible goods is somewhat different from services and other sectors, Hampson is utterly clear: "With us, production is king. Doing everything possible with ICT to help enable quality and efficiency in production is my key responsibility. Even with enhanced efficiencies, including cost reduction, in a continuous programme of improvement, part of the job has always been looking ahead strategically. You tend to accomplish a phase of improvement investment and action then pause to think about ‘What happens next?’" In fact Hampson is inclined to suggest that a lot of the louder discussions about the changing role of the CIO are being driven by the ICT vendors, with the obvious self-interest of promoting change, their new technology and a bigger spend all round.
Part of job
"As far as I’m concerned, innovation has always been part of the job. On the other hand, innovation in the past was often somewhat siloed, in particular systems or activity streams rather than across the organisation. There are certainly new developments today, like BYOD, that will add more complexity. Tablets, for example, are a step change in portable computing. But there have always been step changes and new thinking and IT management has always dealt with change. In fact it has always or mostly been IT that delivered change."
The manufacturing sector proper, including third party and contract production, has some distinctive characteristics that make for comparatively slow change in some respects. There is physical plant and machinery, and specialist legacy systems, that are intrinsically less flexible than the service sector or other types of organisation. "They are essentially changeable rather than flexible," as Hampson puts it.
No dumbing down
That broad view might seem conservative but it is arguably more realistic than some visions being propagated in the market. It is shared in the financial services sector by Conor O’Brien, who combines the CIO role with his position as COO of Capita Asset Services, a dual role he also held in Friends First for some years. "I am quite sure that in five years whoever sits in this chair will be doing largely the same thing and the changes in ICT and in the business will be relatively superficial. I certainly don’t think that the CIO role will be dumbed down in any way. It has evolved greatly from the days when IT reported to the financial director and was regarded as an expensive if necessary overhead."
"We have long since stopped talking about ‘the business’ as if it were something separate from ICT or ‘ICT projects’ as if they were not mainstream business projects. The business and its operating technologies are just inextricable, as is the role of the CIO in thinking strategically and working on the business planning with other senior colleagues," O’Brien says.
Capita, like most financial services firms and especially as a contract service provider working with other peoples’ data is acutely security conscious. "So I hear pundits saying Ireland is slow to move to cloud, as if we were in some way backward because we didn’t jump on the bandwagon. Cloud is just not mature enough for us and even then I would ask if we would seriously consider entrusting highly sensitive financial and personal client data to what is effectively bureau computing. On the other hand, we are fully virtualised and effectively working with a private cloud. That is very valuable and flexible, but it certainly demands high level skills. You have to be very careful because the knock-on effects of any change can be serious."
Other CIOs may be comforted to hear that O’Brien and Capita are holding out firmly against BYOD. "We are looking at iPad and iOS using Mobileiron to control the devices and we certainly have quite a few laptop users. But they are corporate and secured as tightly as we can manage and the handhelds would also be standard issue and give access to email and calendars and some other stuff. But there will be no data on them and remote wiping by security will be fundamental. Those who could benefit from the flexibility may get a choice of device but they will not own them personally."
Confident to cope
It would be unreasonable not to be having the current debate about the future role of the CIO and indeed ICT professionals in senior roles generally-indeed it would be strange if we were not-but Microsoft’s Tim Hynes is fully confident that they will still be at the heart of decision-making in the new world of work that is evolving all around us. As an Irishman who has ascended the corporate ladder to become Senior Director of Site Infrastructure Services (Worldwide) at Microsoft, he is based in Ireland but oversees a team in 40 countries.
Hynes believes that Irish ICT professionals and especially the experienced senior managers are on a par with anywhere else in the world. "At that level, I’m confident that we can cope with whatever comes down the track and would love to see our CIOs and leaders be more confident and assertive." As for the current state of play, he believes that the convergence of all of our computing and communications capabilities is the key factor, leading us to cloud and whatever comes next.
"Cloud has been promising for several years and never really delivered, but it is now at a point of maturity. As for consumerisation, there is something of a tendency in professional ICT circles to regard consumer devices as having more than a touch of the Hector Grey market, cheap and cheerful and transient." But Hynes is a firm believer in and advocate of ‘the new world of work’, a Microsoft message but a vision shared by most of the technology majors. That is all about 24×365 access to information, portability of devices and flexibility in the ways and times that people work and collaborate.
Next gen, new work
"As people become used to this new way of working, and a new generation knows no other, I think we are seeing nothing less than transformation in the whole architecture of work. It is much more profound than the ICT, which is just a set of enabling technologies that will itself change and develop. Today’s collaboration and information sharing is very different from the old models, with corridors of closed office doors. The psychology and the behaviours are different; the barriers of ranks and roles are breaking down. Is that caused or enabled by new technology? The point is that in this new world of work in the 21st century the physical work environment in ‘the office’ is very different and a lot of people spend minimal time there anyway."
So we are all going to have to let go of older work habits and learn to embrace and gain value from the new world of work. The CIO has a new challenge in leading and enabling that cultural transition, Hynes says, pointing out that today’s generation is natively digital and has no baggage from the old days and more formal working styles. "It is a new combinative culture, a converged digital world. The CIO role is not about servers and flashing lights. It is about seeing ‘what can we enable’ and what is the best way to do it."
He throws out the Nigerian market as a thought-provoking example. "Nigeria is a vast country with relatively low internet penetration, yet if figures in the top 10 worldwide for internet usage, especially by young people in their 20s. I think that is a good example of the role the new CIO plays and will play-working with marketing and other business leaders to figure out ways of generating business from that barely tapped digital market in Nigeria. What could we offer, how could we do it?"
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