I found some great observations in this post about why CIOs are becoming relevant again.
You could argue that a parallel process has been happening in the manufacturing world for some time and with the same effect. As companies that for years were running their own factories and infrastructures, moved to an outsourced model, the operational leaders needed to adapt. No longer was the operational executive as concerned with the internal operation of the infrastructure but rather, with the changing relationships and complexities with the ecosystem of partners and systems that they had established.
In the software world, a move to cloud computing is very similar. While a company may transfer responsibility of a system to a partner or group of partners, the burden of that system and how it impacts the business of the company is not relinquished and must be managed. The simple act of an upgrade or the unanticipated retiring of a feature could have profound implications to the company’s use of the software or how it integrates into a larger group of systems. While on-premise ownership affords a CIO the luxury of denying or delaying an upgrade for simplicity sake, the cloud offers no such shelter. This, by example, offers insight into the problems now faced by an organization in it’s move to the cloud. Like the operational transition in manufacturers, the end result is a new (slimmer) technical organization with similar skills and new responsibilities.
As the leader of the technical organization, the CIO must be charged with making sure this new business paradigm does not impact the company in a negative way. This has been the case in manufacturing and the operational executive has been the one to manage the organization through the transition. The role of the executive evolved – CIOs are more relevant than ever.
