Earlier this year, data storage and information security giant EMC held its fourth annual CIO Summit in Las Vegas. After the event, Vic Bhagat, the company's CIO, reflected on the general trends that emerged, and penned six solutions for the biggest issues affecting CIOs today.
"Of course, it would be overly ambitious to say we collectively solved all that ails CIOs because we've just scratched the surface," he wrote. "However, faced with pressure to provide our businesses and users with agile, elastic and contemporary IT services, we only saw an opportunity to unlock more value."
These were his six takeaways from the summit:
Be a catalyst for driving agility and value. By partnering closely with your business, you not only secure their buy-in and better understand their needs, but you identify ways that IT can help monetise big data and analytics to accelerate growth.
Focus on your core competency, not the commodities. As a broker of services, you should provide your business with the speed and capabilities it needs while focusing on furthering innovation in your organisation.
Be more contemporary. Listening and capturing your user expectations and sentiment is much more critical as you embrace and offer more mobile, social and digital services.
Get the most out of your environment. Manage your costs and increase the performance and utilisation of your infrastructure en route to the software-defined enterprise with virtualisation, automation and the hybrid cloud.
Don't wait for the technology or it will pass you by. Continue to redefine how you do IT to stay ahead of the ever-changing technology landscape, as well as the security risks and governance guidelines you may face.
Challenge your people and processes. CIOs must continually streamline existing processes to improve service delivery and up-skill employees to tackle third platform initiatives, such as cloud, big data, mobile and social.
Speedy delivery
"Clearly, this is easier said than done," Bhagat said. "However, being more value-driven and contemporary will help CIOs remain relevant and keep their seat at the table in a world of ever-increasing IT complexity and competition."
So which of these six solutions ring most true for South African CIOs or IT decision-makers and are there others they would add to the list?
Kevin Wilson, GM of IT Services at construction group Stefanutti Stocks, believes the first point that covers partnering closely with the business to accelerate growth is a fine ideal, but points out that understanding what business wants is one thing; delivering it timeously is quite another.
"We've been driving this kind of agility ourselves, but there's always pressure, and when something is requested by business, they all sing from the same hymn sheet - that it takes IT too long to do anything," he says. "We're trying to plumb our raw infrastructure so that we can deliver fast enough."
He says that at the same time, his team looks at new processes for efficiency, or old processes that can be re-engineered to deliver efficiency. "If we can look at creating value in these two ways, we can ask for money, which solves the problem of being expected to run on a flat or declining budget. But yes, we do have to understand the business better to get to the point where we can add value."
Communication is key
He adds his own point to the list, namely that communication and training is vital. "We own the keys to communication, but we are not getting the bandwidth and not communicating nearly enough. We don't only need to train IT staff, but a whole tier of people to grow the general IT skills of all our staff."
This is done at his organisation by using competency in the International Computer Driving Licence as incentive for IT upgrades. "You can train IT staff to do support, but knowledge is needed all the way down to the person putting stuff in on the screen. We need to get down there and challenge people."
Traditional IT infrastructure is becoming much less relevant and what you deliver to end devices has become far more relevant.
Anthony Schoombie, Murray & Roberts
Anthony Schoombie, IT security and governance officer at Murray & Roberts, agrees that the first point is the most relevant. "Businesses are fast moving these days and can't wait long for IT to deliver," he says. "In our business, we do a lot of growth by acquisition, so we must be on our toes at all times."
He agrees that CIOs need to be more contemporary. "Traditional IT infrastructure is becoming much less relevant and what you deliver to end devices has become far more relevant."
He says that in the construction industry, people want to do more on their mobile devices on-site. Fortunately for his delivery timetable, though, the next generation of mobile users hasn't fully come through the ranks of qualified engineers as yet. "The people we have can see the value of these mobile tools, but I'm not sure that the workforce is ready to work that out."
And in response to the point that suggests CIOs should challenge their people and processes so that they can tackle cloud, big data, mobile and social, he says that while IT may want to monetise big data and provide information that creates value, it can be difficult to get there.
This, he says, brings the argument full circle back to the first point of agile delivery, but points out that the systems have to support this. "You can't wake up and decide what you want to do. Systems need to be ready, and they aren't really, yet."
According to Sasan Parvin, technical director at iBurst, people can sometimes get carried away by focusing on their core competencies rather than the commodities. "CIOs can end up focusing too much on what the business wants and forget what they're accountable to do. The engine must work 100%; without one you can't do the other. You need the vehicle that drives you forward."
Common understanding
As for the suggestion to be more contemporary, he says that the end-user experience is the driving force of any business. "You have to be able to identify where needs, efficiencies and expectations are heading. You should be able to predict where users are going, and use technology to fulfil their needs. You have to be creating all the time, and reinventing yourself almost daily because of the prevalence of new things."
Finally, he adds to the list that part of the CIO function should be to ensure that other executive decision-makers have a common understanding. "This list is not for CIOs alone. CIOs should follow the best practices, but what they're doing should be understood at executive level by all to avoid stagnation and to be seen as bringing benefits to the whole."
Bhagat's list, while providing a great blueprint for CIOs, is held back from effective rollout in South Africa by the same list of drawbacks that we always encounter: technological immaturity holding back full value realisation from new technology, a lack of user knowledge, a lack of exco communication, and low budgets. Fortunately, with so many CIOs singing from the same hymn sheet, these issues will doubtless be addressed in time.
First published in the November 2014 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
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