We've all heard the hype about a future of data-driven, always-connected devices where everything from cars to game consoles to refrigerators plays a role in the Internet of Things. We envision our household appliances tapped into the power grid, analyzing and fine-tuning electricity use. We expect our parked cars to one day use Wi-Fi to send traffic and weather forecasts to our office computers before we head out on the commute home.
Look at where technology is going, or where it's dragging us, and you see two unstoppable forces that, if mismanaged, will send problems rippling through corporate IT infrastructure for years: Cloud and mobile computing.
CIOs need enterprise architects.
In late 2008, Monsanto licensed a seed coating that helps corn, soybean and other seeds fight insects and disease during the tricky germination stage. By early 2009, company scientists had finished work on that cocktail of fungicides and insecticides, dubbed Acceleron, and the company wanted to get the coating to market in time for the 2010 planting season. "We were going after that opportunity very aggressively. If we don't hit season, that opportunity is another 12 months away," says CIO Shirley Cunningham.
The promise of cost savings derived from cloud computing is attractive, but concrete financial returns are not always quickly achieved. Except, perhaps, when it comes to disaster recovery.
The CEO of Owens & Minor, an $8 billion medical device company, values CIO Rick Mears' industry knowledge.
Cloud computing promises the ability to move applications and systems to the location and platform that makes the most sense--in terms of risk and economics--at any given time.
Your book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, challenges the value of crowdsourcing. What's wrong with the hive mind on the Internet?
If we keep going the way we are now, this year we will outsource one in four IT jobs to India, Russia and other countries that supply low-cost labor, according to the Hackett Group, a trend that sends a message to young people contemplating technology careers: IT work is unstable. You can't count on climbing any career ladder.
Sometimes you take a chance on technology even when you can't predict hard returns, hoping that an educated experiment will create business opportunities.
Pamela Rucker doesn't want to spend money with IT vendors that waste water or energy, or that have large carbon footprints. After all, she says, as vice president of IT for environmental services firm PSC, it would be hypocritical to not hold vendors to high standards.
Kennametal, a $2 billion maker of construction tools, has spent $10 million on ERP maintenance contracts during the past 13 years and not once could the company take advantage of upgrades, says CIO Steve Hanna. The company's implementation was too customized: The time and effort needed to tweak and test the upgrade outweighed any benefits, he says. But Hanna kept trying. Late last year, he priced the cost of consultants to help with an ERP re-implementation and was shocked by estimates ranging from $15 million up to $54 million.
While cloud vendors trumpet the savings and flexibility they can provide compared to on-premise IT, they don't, as a matter of course, address key e-discovery issues. Before signing any tempting deals, experts say, CIOs must hold vendors' feet to the fire about how--and how quickly--the vendor will help meet data requests in the face of lawsuits, compliance audits, data breaches and other legal situations.
What about the CIO role do you think is changing?
Bigtime CIOs have endured a volatile year, and their wallets have felt the impact. The sour economy and politics involved have led to a huge drop in performance bonuses and rejiggered our annual list of high-paid technology leaders.