Wednesday | 9 July, 2008
CIO

Opinions

The CIO of the Future
Veteran CIOs provide advice on how to take your job — and the contribution IT makes to your company — to the next level
Louis Ehrlich and Marc West 05 June, 2007 12:10:26

Related Features
  • +

    Process Trip 04 February, 2008 13:07:03

    Why Maritz Travel revamped key business processes — and how business and IT came together to make it work
    When Rich Phillips became COO OF Maritz Travel about two and-a-half years ago, he sat down and took a hard look at the big industry picture
  • +

    Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15

    Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
    Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
  • +

    How to Get Real About Strategic Planning 04 February, 2008 12:50:59

    Everyone agrees that having a strategic plan for IT is a good thing but most CIOs approach the process with fear and loathing. In fact, the majority of CIOs (and the enterprises they work for) are faking it when it comes to strategic planning. Isn't it time we all got real?
    Oh, it must be nice to be the CIO of a FedEx or a GE or a Credit Suisse. Places where IT and the business are so tightly aligned you can barely tell the two apart. Where corporate leaders understand that IT is a strategic asset and support it as such
  • +

    Toxic Mix or Bit of a Mixed Blessing? 31 December, 2007 10:36:30

    “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog . . . ” The inter-generational office brew of Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y may not be quite as odious as that of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but even so it makes “for a charm of powerful trouble”
    "Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog . . . " The inter-generational office brew of Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y may not be quite as odious as that of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, but even so it makes "for a charm of powerful trouble"
  • +

    Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24 December, 2007 10:30:47

    Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.
    Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.
Related Stories
  • +

    Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44

    Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage
    Adobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
  • +

    Bill Gates: A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century 28 January, 2008 07:12:19

    Transcript of Gates speech, and a Q&A at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
    As you all may know, in July I'll make a big career change. I'm not worried; I believe I'm still marketable. I'm a self-starter, I'm proficient in Microsoft Office. I guess that's it. Also I'm learning how to give money away.
Additional Resources
Executive Guides
Whitepapers

Newsletter Subscription

Sign up for our CIO newsletters!
Weekly coverage of the issues that impact corporate and government information
RSS Feeds

You wouldn't expect a traditional CIO to manage the process of, say, opening 10,000 seasonal locations and hiring 100,000 seasonal employees, and then be asked by the CEO to run a line of business in addition to the IT function. Nor is it typical for a CIO to routinely work with business leaders to clarify their strategy and translate it into action, and then be asked by the CEO to manage business strategy worldwide. But this is what happened to us last year at H&R Block and Chevron Global Downstream, respectively.

We aren't unique in seeing our roles evolve and take on a broader, more business-oriented and strategic focus. We believe that this is the future state of the CIO role, which in time will become the mandate for most CIOs at most businesses.

Strategic CIOs look at the company from the outside in and ask: How is the company perceived by customers?

What distinguishes a strategic, or "future-state", CIO? Fundamentally, the CIO role encompasses three aspects: the function head (focused on operations), the transformational leader (focused on alignment, enablement and process change) and the business strategist. The strategist targets how a company creates shareholder value and serves its customers. The strategic CIO is a business leader who happens to use technology as the core tool to create competitive advantage. CIOs who primarily have an operations or transformational role look at a company from the inside out — starting with how they operate and then looking out to the customer. Strategic CIOs look at the company from the outside in and ask: How is the company perceived by customers? What is the technology platform our competitors are using to compete against us?

Market Place
 

2008 CIO Summit

19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.

The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.

Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.

Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'

Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).

Click here for registration.

Click here for more information.

Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.

  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05

    Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    Citibank debit card fraud highlights ATM vulnerabilities 08 July, 2008 08:17:53

    'Back-end servers are kind of a joke,' and the trouble doesn't end there
    Malicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives.
  • +

    How to not have your Web site hacked like Sony's 07 July, 2008 08:23:22

    A SQL injection attack was used to plant malicious code on pages of two popular Sony Playstation games - SingStar Pop and God of War, reports security company Sophos. Hundreds of Web pages from other businesses have also been compromised.
    The US Sony Playstation Web site is the latest high-profile victim of a hacker attack on business sites that's spreading malware at breakneck pace, says a security vendor.
  • +

    AG launches review into national e-security 07 July, 2008 11:07:49

    Howard's security agenda dragged over coals.
    A review of Australia's top e-security projects lead by the Attorney-General's Department has been launched to scrutinise the Howard's government's $73 million E-Security National Agenda.
  • +

    Selling zero-day exploits has a down side 07 July, 2008 10:16:36

    There is an ongoing argument about the ethics of selling 0-day exploits on the open market: It helps if you don't sell exploits targeting the company you work for.
    Information Security can sometimes be a funny field to work in. Some days it seems as if anybody with their hands on unpublished exploit code can sell it for all they're worth, and others it seems that they are set to become the target of law enforcement and the companies the code affects. It does help if you don't work for one of the companies that is set to be affected by the exploits you are trying to sell and aren't trying to bootstrap a competing company in the process.
  • +

    'I have a lost laptop horror story for you' 30 June, 2008 10:08:14

    The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow...
    The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
Watch the latest latest edition of CIO Innovation which is now available for download.
Watch the webcast
Sign up to the CIO Innovation update email


CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II
Listen to the latest edition of CIO Live which is now available for download.
Listen to the podcast
Sign up to the CIO Live email
Whitepaper

EMC Solutions for Databases Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Nseries iSCSI

Discover how to maintain service levels, reduce costs, reduce risk and accelerate implementations in mid size enterprises with EMC Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server Nseries iSCSI.

Sponsored Links