The demise of the CIO? By 2019 the role will be fundamentally changed or eradicated

As part of Camwood’s ‘What’s next?’ campaign looking at the future of IT in the post-XP world, an independent survey of 250 IT Decision Makers from large companies suggests the days of the CIO as we know them, may be numbered.

The role of the CIO will be fundamentally changed or eradicated by 2019, according to recent research of 250 IT decision makers in the UK. The findings, which form part of Camwood’s ‘After the big XP migration: What now?’ report, found that 69% of IT directors and managers, in organisations with over 2,000 seats in the UK, agree that the current CIO function will transform significantly over the next five years. 39% also believed that the role of the IT Manager would be dead by the end of this year.


In Camwood’s view, this uncertainty as to the future nature of certain key roles is to be expected, and reflects the rapidly-changing nature of the IT function. IT directors and managers now see near constant change as the ‘new normal’ moving forward. It seems logical that the role of the CIO is going to evolve in-line with the rapid pace of change in IT.


“Traditionally the CIO has been the executive in control of the information strategy and service delivery across the organisation, with insight into all of the business' technology projects. But this has changed. Factors such as the consumerisation of IT, digital marketing, the increased use of cloud services by the business, and BYOD have forced the CIO to loosen the reigns of control. As a result, their role has been called into question,” commented Simon Body, CTO, Camwood.


“The debate over the future role of the CIO is not a new one. We’ve heard everything from ’the CIO won’t die’ to ’they’re definitely on the way out’. But the signal from 250 of the UK’s most influential IT directors and managers is quite telling.”


“But to our mind the CIO is not ‘dead’. The role is changing and will continue to evolve but it will not disappear. Over the next five years, successful CIOs will be those who have aligned themselves with the business, understand what their organisation needs to drive sales and beat the competition and find the technology solution that makes their business even more successful. In the post-XP world however, this is not a one off event, this has to take place continually. Technology evolves constantly, and the CIO should do too.”


To help CIOs keep pace with the constantly changing IT environment, Camwood has launched a series of new services to help analyse, monitor and report on every aspect of a business’ technology infrastructure. By having an in-depth overview of the entire IT function, the new products will enable CIOs to improve security, increase governance, deliver compliance and better manage all information.


The first of these services, ‘Cloud Readiness’, which is available immediately, will aim to help businesses quickly assess how much of their data and applications they can move across to The Cloud, and will give them the ability to assess the cost, performance and compliance factors involved in doing so.
 

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