Telescope: CIO role is not about SAP and Oracle

MUMBAI, INDIA: "The answer is only important if you know the right question." Anyone who happens to remember Mr. Miyagi must have spent a minute or two on this nugget of wisdom that the petite looking veteran passed on to his Karate Kid. It's intriguing to discover how this rule of Martial Arts applies to the art of work and life effortlessly.

No degree of clairvoyant powers, or Tarot-card reading skills, scientific appetite or Mercury-deciphering forecast can help to look into 'The Beyond'. Unless one is armed with the 'right' question.

The uncanny ability to put one’s finger at the right spot and the sixth sense to discover the needle in a stack of hype, are exactly the traits that make Linda Price, Group Vice President, Gartner unique as an analyst.

You will find her arguing passionately about the need for CIOs to wake up to the C-Suite horizons and the imperatives of interpreting people issues that are often washed ashore in the tide of technology.

Sometimes it takes a whole tankful of gas before you can think straight. Linda Price is now the group vice president of service delivery with Gartner Executive Programs in Asia/Pacific. But Price has been a senior IT executive with 20 years’ experience in media, manufacturing, distribution and service organizations. She has also led several IT and organizational change programs aligning people, process and technology to deliver strategic outcomes. And with years of this ‘HR and hands-on industry’ prefixing her métier as an analyst, Linda seems to have gone through just that length and stretch of journey to empower her to look straight into the future. Join in for a peek.

In your articles, you highlighted some really strong points about what stops a CIO from entering and holding the C-Suite? How are those challenges defining the contours of an Indian CIO’s future?

In Gartner’s 2011 CIO Survey conducted during Q4 2010, an interesting finding was that leading CIOs spent an additional two days per month with their business stakeholders.  That statement says a great deal with regard to the importance of CIOs managing their key C-suite stakeholders.  If we use this finding as an indication of the difference between CIOs who “enter and hold the C-suite” and other CIOs then it would appear that collaboration with the business is really of critical importance to the success of the CIO. The most successful CIOs with whom Gartner work have determined that the CIO role is not about managing SAP and Oracle and the networks.  That is the role for which a very competent CTO is recruited.  These activities are critically important.  However they do not lead to a competitive differentiation.  That will come from the CIO working with the business to deploy technology in pursuit of achievement of the business strategy.

Every other research report is pointing at the impact of this new wave called 'Consumerisation of IT'. What indeed, would be the HR and CIO implications of this wave?

Consumerism is going to have a very significant impact on both the CIO and HR agendas — more so the CIO agenda in my opinion.  Traditionally the IT organisation has operated in a very structured, risk-averse and internally focused fashion.  The rapid rise of consumerism means that IT has now to undergo a change of orientation.  More and more the business is seeking to collaborate with its external partners and customers via integration of systems and external access to processes and information internal to the organisation.  Significant challenges in this regard pertain to an enterprise architecture which will accommodate this new externalization — and importantly also a change of mindset within the IT organization. 

How to alter that mindset?

Traditionally the IT organization has exhibited a 'fortress' mentality that was very suitable for legacy operations.  It must now adopt one that enables, in an appropriately secure manner, transactions with consumers and external partners in the manner in which they, especially those with mobile devices, demand it.

Would it be very tough in terms of 'people-related issues'?

Gartner still has clients who are burying their heads in the sand with regard to this aspect of change in the workplace.  What good is banning social media sites on the corporate network as a supposed means of preserving productivity when employees are able to access these sites via their mobile devices.

From an HR perspective, the most challenging aspect of the new consumerism is also two fold.  On one hand it relates to the policies and procedures that need to underpin educational programs in how to use social media and applications available for private use available via the internet and mobile devices.  On the other hand, a more challenging aspect of consumerism in the workplace again pertains to a mindset change.

Another big wave — Cloud; there is a lot of promise that surrounds it, along with all the concerns. Is there an elephant in the room that everyone is dodging?  Do you see it?

I agree that there is a great deal of hype surrounding cloud.  However most of that is coming from the vendors.  I am observing among our Gartner Executive Programs clients that cloud, despite all the hype, is being approached with an appropriate level of skepticism and caution.  Our clients are testing the waters carefully.  They are building capability in public cloud by using it for applications that pertain to activities such as marketing, systems testing, office applications, videoing etc.  CIOs are rightly anxious about putting corporate data into the public cloud.  Security and privacy concerns abound — as well as continuity of service concerns.  There are also pressing matters regarding territorial issues to be resolved before public cloud matures e.g. the data from a German organization being stored on infrastructure in US. 

What’s the right approach for those sitting on the fence?

One particularly successful example of public cloud that was recently written up as a Gartner case study pertains to a retailer in Australia who wanted to expand into international markets.  One of the issues they encountered was the payroll processes from other countries.  Rather than amend their own systems — at considerable cost and time — they subscribed to a cloud offering that provided them with all the calculations and reporting necessary to enter their target foreign markets and pay their staff correctly.

Some larger clients with the capability to build and implement private clouds are using them to build capability while sharing best practice functions among its in-house users.  For example a large global bank has established a payments gate-way in the cloud that multiple in house tenants now use — rather then duplicating these among business units.