Deloitte has outlined 10 major trends that CIOs need to be aware will change their job description, including becoming a venture capitalist, dabbling in cognitive analytics and championing wearable computing devices.
The new report outlines five trends that will define CIOs as disrupters and five other trends that will define them as enablers for their organisation.
The five disrupter trends include the CIO as venture capitalist, cognitive analytics, industrialised crowdsourcing, digital engagement and wearable computing.
The five enabler trends that will impact CIOs will be technical debt reversal, social activation, cloud orchestration, in memory revolution and real-time DevOps.
“Disruptive technologies – from wearable devices to cognitive analytics to crowdsourcing – present unprecedented opportunities to reimagine how work gets done, how businesses grow, and how markets and industries evolve,” said Harry Goddard, Partner, Technology Consulting at Deloitte Ireland.
“But they also represent threats – and real challenges on how to balance experimentation for tomorrow with the realities of today.
“The recent Deloitte CIO survey found that only 35pc of Irish CIOs believe their IT function is considered a hub of innovation – therefore CIOs here will need to assess how these trends are changing business as usual and opening the door for them to truly transform their business operations.
“One of the most interesting – and perhaps most talked about – trends this year is the CIO developing a venture capitalist mindset in relation to IT portfolio management.
“An effective portfolio view enables the CIO to continually evaluate and manage the strategic performance of each asset, project and vendor and communicate the value contribution in terms that business leaders understand,” Goddard said.
Wearable computing and cloud orchestration
Wearable computing has many forms, such as glasses, watches, smart badges and bracelets. Deloitte says the potential is tremendous: hands-free, heads-up technology to reshape how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how you engage with employees, customers, and partners.
Wearables introduce technology to previously prohibitive scenarios where safety, logistics, or even etiquette constrained the usage of laptops and smartphones. While consumer wearables are in the spotlight today, Deloitte expect business to drive acceptance and transformative use cases.
Cloud adoption across the enterprise is a growing reality, but much of the usage is in addition to on-premises system – not in replacement.
As cloud services continue to expand, organisations are increasingly connecting cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-core systems – in strings, clusters, storms and more – cobbling together discrete services for a complete business process.
Tactical adoption of cloud is giving way to the need for a coordinated, orchestrated strategy – and for a new class of cloud offerings built around business outcomes.
“Pretty soon it will be rare for organisations not to have a presence on multiple clouds (both private and public),” Goddard explained.
“In Ireland, our CIO Survey found that the balance currently lies with private cloud, with a 43% adoption rate versus 32% for public clouds, but this is likely to change. The challenge for organisations will be to integrate the multiple public and private cloud offerings with their core enterprise systems.
“It is those CIOs who have the disciplines of data management and integration architecture in place who will be best positioned to create harmony out of the existing landscape and then to leverage orchestration services when they arrive,” said Goddard.
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Digital disrupter image via Shutterstock
