Is there some sense in which having got the IT function leader to the C-suite, largely in the last decade in Ireland, that hard-earned status is now under threat? Since recession got its hungry teeth into ICT investment and innovation, is it the chief financial officer (CFO) who calls the shots, to the extent that in practice, if not nominally, the chief information officer (CIO) is reporting to the CFO? Another line of argument in ICT circles, otherwise known as ‘the trade’, is that there is a positive surge towards people going their own way in using personally chosen software and devices in their jobs, just as they are accustomed to doing as consumers. Managing customer contact information, just for one example, has lots of easy online solutions like Plaxo or Zoho, or indeed Salesforce, as a single user if your organisation does not use it.
It is just a small step from there to team leaders and divisional managers choosing software or services believe are more directly focussed or more usable than the corporate options-or to fill what they see as a gap in official ICT resources. A perfect example is Dropbox.com: deeply distrusted by corporate IT but so useful for transferring and sharing files, especially slightly larger ones, that it is very widely used. Many people find it simpler than other methods for transferring their own files from one device to another.
Dropped box
Dropbox exemplifies the tip of a very grey berg where people will find and use alternatives that suit their own style of working, more often than not in enthusiasm for their work rather than any remotely irresponsible motivation. But of course they usually just do not understand the potential perils. On the other hand, maybe people recognise all too well that their own IT people are just automatically begrudging of anything that does not come through the formal channels. The lessons have been there in security for years-passwords on sticky notes, security doors propped open and so on. If it’s made too hard or cumbersome people take short cuts for speed and convenience, which are what IT is supposed to be supporting.
All of which raises questions about where the effective ICT leadership in today’s organisations is actually coming from. The top? Or seeping in from outside and up from the bottom like rising e-damp? (Maybe that should be iDamp, at the risk of offending the happy denizens of the walled orchard?) Remember what the French revolutionary said: “There goes the mob, I am their leader, I must follow.”
In practice and in larger organisations, this is still a philosophical question rather than a consistent current pressure on decision or strategy. On the other hand, start-ups and smaller businesses are coming up through this generation of ubiquitous internet connectivity and smart personal devices. As they reach senior management ranks, as many already have, most of the current corporate reservations about web services, mobile apps and social networks will evaporate.
C for cloud
In fact Xilinx CIO Kevin Cooney reckons that, metaphorically speaking, the C in CIO is beginning to stand for ‘Cloud’. “If the C-suite is not prepared to play in this wonderful new space you have to question the future of the CIO role. Collaboration and communication are wonderfully enhanced by the rich functionality now being delivered by the Web, essentially cloud, and those are what every organisation also needs. We should be looking actively for ways to bring those features inside the enterprise and to use them, for easy to use collaboration and to gain value for the business.”
He points out that whatever the specific title, the CIO or head of ICT has and will have the primary duty of what we tend to shorthand as ‘keeping the lights on.’ “It is very difficult to get credit for innovation or adding value if the infrastructure keeps crashing!” But over the course of the next five or ten years, most of an organisation’s ICT functionality will be outsourced from cloud resources. That will completely change the context for in-house IT and its management.
But it will still and always have to do with getting the platforms right, in Cooney’s view. “Today we are looking at core enterprise applications like ERP, very formal and structured, in contrast with the new person-to-person architecture of the social web. In many respects IT people are struggling to try to bring the two very different types of ICT together and perhaps it is all outside their traditional comfort zone. But that is unquestionably what we have to do. Identify and choose the key and best features of both and marry them to the needs of the organisation.”
Social embrace
The corporate IT world has to embrace social media, web collaboration and the smart phone app mentality. “We have to embrace this new personal and consumer technology and in fact get ahead of it where possible. We need to find ways to let people choose their own technology, things they are comfortable with and that make them in the end more effective, yet within a controlled environment.” The old approach was to try to make people fit into the standard corporate ways of working, which in truth had usually just evolved into some sort of steady state. Today’s technologies offer a better way, potentially, and in fact are inevitable anyway.
For the enterprise, Cooney points out, the key issues are around integration, flexibility and scalability and of course security. “The challenge is to create platforms that will support enterprise users across the range of technologies, creatively adapting to this new generation of ICT. Users will want to mix-and-match their tool sets and we simply have to find the technical means to join them all up securely. A good example of the principle is a two in one IP phone with complete logical separation between the corporate and the personal on the same device. That ‘choose your own devices’ approach is already almost standard in adaptive organisations and the security challenges are being met.”
For the CIO and the IT team, he emphasises, the challenge is not the technical stuff but the need to get to the fore and to anticipate and drive the change and progress. “In blunt fact, those who do not do it will have it done to them.”
Permanent C
Frank Modruson of Accenture is another CIO who has a global view, in his case given depth by the nature of his organisation as a consulting and outsourcing enterprise. He does not see the CIO disappearing. “The role has been continually evolving since it first rose from the pure IT engineering in the late 80s and the 90s. As the technology changed and grew into its central place in enterprise and society the CIO role changed with it. But it retains its dual aspects of looking after the basics, keeping the systems and applications running properly, and looking forward to identify and invest in technologies to help the organisation run better.”
In the context of rapid change and the new Web 2.0 world, the latter part of the role has become ever more important. “The CIO just can’t abdicate that strategic thing or it will be taken up and led in practice by departments and groups and, apart from the other potential problems, there will in no time be the kind of corporate issues we have experienced and suffered from before, with silos of information and no one version of the truth,” Modruson says.
Great revolution
Enterprise technology today is a scale play, he emphasises. And everything has to work together uniformly at the core, whatever the superficial differences in devices and tools. “The great revolution was the Internet, bringing data, voice and video onto the same platform, with access by Wi-Fi and smart phones as well as traditional wired infrastructure. After that in many ways the rapid advances are in technology and usage. Web collaboration is growing better and smarter all the time, and we believe video will be the next big wave, but the core principle for the CIO is how the organisation should harness those communications tools to leverage capabilities and costs.”
As for threats to the CIO position, Modruson says simply that there will always be unless the role and its holders continue to evolve and lead. “The constants are in the search to do things better, faster, cheaper. It’s kinda that simple and that’s how success will always be measured. For example, all of those smart collaboration and communications tools, say with video at the top end, are not cheap but they are a small fraction of the ongoing cost overheads of real estate.” So the organisation of tomorrow and its management are going to be much less obviously and visibly structured physically, he argues. That will increase the reach and responsibility of the CIO, with serious challenges at the infrastructure level that can be obscured by the speed of change in devices and tools.
“In today’s enterprise we can see very clearly that the power is in the information. The quality of the information, speed of access, consistency, collaboration between people and between business customers and partners are the important elements,” he said. Systems architecture and applications and databases all exist to serve that and that is where the major change is happening and is at its most challenging for the CIO. “Data is now driving the architecture. Think, for example, of the great advances in analytics and the many ways in which such capabilities are proving of value to the enterprise. So the challenges to the CIO are hard and getting harder-which in the end is what will keep the role front and centre in the organisation.”
Three-way
Any challenges to the CIO position from relationships with the CFO are more likely to reflect a local culture than general corporate management today, according to Conor O’Brien of Capita Asset Services. His experience is probably unique in Ireland in that he combined the Chief Operating Officer and CIO roles in Friends First for several years and continues to do so in Capita which he joined as COO earlier this year. “Firstly, in regard to any serious and strategic investment in ICT and in the current economic climate I think it will be driven by a three-way partnership between the CIO, CFO and their CEO. In making the business case for investment the CFO is the best ally and sponsor you can have, in my experience. Anyone in that role today is generally very aware of the value of smart ICT, personally tech-savvy and quick to see advantages for the future. Yes, the business case will need to be robust and some element of definite cost saving in the shorter term will be more persuasive.”
As for social pressure in the enterprise for new web technologies and smart personal devices, O’Brien says it is perfectly legitimate pressure. “People use smart phones and very personal choices of laptops and iPads or tablets in their personal lives and are quite right to ask ‘Why can’t I use this for work?’ Travelling staff have for years been combining personal communications or entertainment using their laptops and I think that is absolutely legitimate and not particularly difficult for the enterprise to manage securely.”
With personal experience of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy for over a year, O’Brien points out that it is a cost cutting measure as well as facilitating people by letting them work according to their own style and tastes. “In fact I wonder why we still call them ‘users’ when so clearly today our colleagues are clients of ICT who actually do know and understand a great deal about technology. Like business clients, the job of the CIO is to understand their requirements and their tastes and to ensure the enterprise delivers what they need in an easy to use way-which is precisely why they are making personal choices as consumers. The meaty end of enterprise systems and architecture and security is a different matter. Some aspects have become easier to manage, others are bigger challenges, but then that’s the job!”
Partnership potential
Another high level view comes from Paul Murphy, IBM executive partner in Ireland for its Global Business Services. “Whatever about lingering cultures where the head of IT reported to finance, it is abundantly clear that in high potential and high growth enterprises today the key leader partnership is between the CIO and the CEO. Ask either officer how the changing environment is going to impact on the business and you will get much the same answers. We have done some international research which showed a positively surprising degree of alignment between the insights and thinking of CEOs and their CIOs in assessing the challenges to their business.”
He emphasises focus as the key requirement of today’s CIO. “The real needs and priorities of the organisation are still paramount and any IT leader can lose trust and credibility if the basics are not right. That idea of the CIO as an innovator, for example, is fine where innovation is key in that enterprise, but in others the focus has to be firmly on minding the systems infrastructure and controlling the costs of doing business.”
Murphy points also to information integration and collaboration as key elements in today’s technology. “The ways in which we interact with each other in business, as individuals and as corporations, are changing rapidly. Smart analytics are raising the standards of information quality. Mergers and acquisitions are on the increase and ICT plays a huge part in enabling the success of those strategic decisions in business. There are the areas where CIOs can bring their experience and authority to bear and give decisive leadership in executing whatever the corporate vision involves.”
CFO endorsement
Another Irish CIO with a very positive view of the relationship between the CIO role and the CFO is Karen Forte of Allianz Insurance, a multinational with a leading market share and 600 staff in this country. “I think there is a strong alignment and top financial managers have a deep appreciation of the contribution ICT can make. They have a slightly different set of lenses when it comes to assessing the business case for investment, naturally enough. But in the end that only strengthens the case for the best investment and the best proposed projects. Working a proposal with and through the financial top management anticipates and overcomes objections and flaws. Endorsement by the CFO then means that when a proposal goes to the board it is really ready for decision and business and ICT are in partnership.”
Threats to the CIO role from consumer technology and popular adoption are not really a ‘danger’, in Karen Forte’s view. “I’m really rather agnostic and would not generalise. It’s going to be about the specific proposal, big or small. We have been essentially virtualised since 2005, so we are an enterprise that is poised to be agile but necessarily cautious in a regulated sector. We are very security conscious, and that is a serious concern of any CIO.”
On the other hand, she points out, Allianz has been offering its staff remote access through a secure portal since 2008: “We have even done it using the iPad, which was supposed to be a big problems. Now we are exploring a BYOD policy, letting people follow their own taste and style in device choice because our systems are device-agnostic and in truth it’s not all that difficult to manage. Security is the persistent concern, across the range from data protection and privacy to malware and reputational damage. The point is the dangers will exist regardless of the devices or systems or communications channels. So the job of the CIO and ICT is to make the choices, design the architecture and manage the changing technologies to overcome the dangers and constraints. That, after all, is what constitutes progress.”
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