The role of the CIO is at an all time low in terms of strategic influence. Their decision making powers, even over their own budget, have been reined in.
Some ‘score on the doors’ sales-focused vendors will be tempted by bypass the CIO in order to try to deal direct with the CFO, COO or whoever actually is making IT-related decisions these days.
In my view that would be a mistake. The CIO is likely to be the person who best ‘gets’ the features and benefits of your offering. And thus is best placed to sell your solution to the decision makers.
The problem is that often CIO lacks the skills to get into the boardroom. High value (and thus big ticket) vendors will invest in their CIO relationships, where necessary supporting their personal development. When you realise that the CIO is fundamentally no longer the buyer but your vendor’s chief sales officer for that account then this starts to make sense.
There is much talk about how IT functions are going to change once the downturn has run its course. There is a presumption here that:
At this present time I am doubtful about both. And so CIOs are encouraged to think about how they change the IT function under what might be called ‘new normal’ conditions.
The difference between the cost of a company and the value of a company is directly correlated to the brand of the company. Therefore it makes sense to approach all value creation activities in the context of brand management.
The IT function might use this relationship to shake off its operational cost centre image.
So am I suggesting we appoint an IT function brand manager? No. In my experience CIOs struggle with branding. This is to some extent understandable given the siege conditions under which many IT functions operate. I suspect brand management doesn’t feature very highly in military academy trench warfare modules.
In a service / knowledge based economy, branding extends beyond the glossary literature and corporate sponsorship into the service creation and delivery processes (increasingly via the web). Thus the IT function is a key element of corporate brand management.
And for that reason the IT function should report into the Chief Marketing Officer. Whilst this may be unpalatable to many of today’s ‘pre-brand’ CIOs, IT staff are likely to raise their game once it dawns on them that their role is now one of business value creation rather than technology cost containment.
I am delighted that my IT Beacon blog has been shortlisted in two important categories in the Computer Weekly Blog Awards 09. They are:
By all means vote for me if the fancy takes you. Just visit the blog and you can't miss the next step.
And thank you to those of you have have voted me into the various shortlists.
I’m Bullish about the Market
IBM must be pretty confident in the IT industry’s future. It has added another $5bn to its share buy-back plan. This is added to the $4.2bn left in the pot from the last wave of buy-backs. A more cautious view on market conditions caused the IT giant to come off the gas in terms of buy backs earlier this year. Other major players including Cisco and Microsoft are similarly in buy-back mode. Possibly they all recognize that even if the poor economic conditions continue, businesses will eventually wake up to the fact that an increase in IT spend that will enable them to get their costs in line with their decreasing revenues.
Data centre war heats up
PC maker and data center aspirant Dell has signed a deal with Juniper Networks to provide network products such as routers and switches. This looks to be part of a power struggle for data centre dominance. Cisco has recently put noses out of joint by entering the server market, albeit in a niche capacity. Dell may be redressing this by going with Cisco’s rival. In any case, in the corporate IT market, the battle for dominance is being played out in the data centre. And Dell like the others knows that it has to be there.
Oracle disappoints EU
Software giant Oracle’s attempts to acquire Sun Microsystems took a blow when the European Commission expressed disappointment with the lack of evidence provided to demonstrate that the deal would not be anti-competitive. The US Department of Justice has already given the takeover the green light. Concerns are focused on the future of MySQL, a database solution acquired by Sun for $1bn not so long ago. It would be very tempting to think that Oracle may not have the MySQL user community’s best interests at heart, given that it is a competitor to Oracle’s own database offering. Given that Sun is apparently leaking $100m per month, it would be helpful if the EC could conclude on this at the earliest opportunity in order for Sun to revert to Plan C (Plan A – The IBM acquisition didn’t work out).