Virtualisation, analytics top priority for CIOs

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 10:51

IT Industry - Market

Australian and New Zealand Smarter Planet Leader for IBM, Matt English, said today that CIOs are “sharpening the focus on building smarter infrastructures and improving business efficiency,” and he added “this study provides insight into critical strategies for both today and the future, whether it’s transforming organisational processes or taking advantage of client and market opportunities across the region and around the globe.”

Other key findings of the IBM survey include:

•         CIOs in A/NZ businesses enjoy more influence on business strategy when compared with the global results, 77 percent of ANZ CIOs hold a seat on the senior management team, while only 54 percent have the privilege of this influence across the world

•         78 percent of ANZ CIOs (76 percent globally) anticipate building a strongly centralised infrastructure in the next five years. Furthermore, 53 percent of ANZ CIOs (56 per cent globally) are expecting to implement completely standardised, low-cost business processes

•         Even as they build these standardised low cost infrastructures, CIOs are able to focus 55 percent of their time on activities that drive innovation and growth – 45 percent in ANZ

•         The remaining 45 percent (55 percent in ANZ) is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment, including reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to lower costs elsewhere in the business

•         85 percent of ANZ CIOs said they believe their customer and business partner relationships and integration will be key to success, while globally almost 68 percent of respondents agreed partner collaboration will drive success

According to Matt English, CIOs spend an impressive 55 percent of their time on activities that drive innovation, whereas “traditional IT tasks like infrastructure and operations management now make up only 45 percent.

“This confirms that CIOs are transforming their infrastructure to focus more on innovation and business value, rather than simply running IT.”

In the study, IBM found that CIOs also identified the top visionary projects that they are working on now or foresee implementing in the future, ranging from process improvement to taking advantage of technologies that can provide immediate and long-term financial impact.

“The study also confirmed that CIOs are focusing on mobility solutions and unified communications, collaboration and social networking tools, and Web 2.0 projects, to enable more effective communications for employees, customers, and partners,” English said.

“The role of the CIO continues to change dramatically. Not only are CIOs trying to standardise routine processes and infrastructure, they’re working to implement technologies to drive innovation and growth.

“The study reveals that CIOs are making the biggest impact on their organisations business by engaging directly with the business, spending more time on innovation, and by being active members of the executive team. CIOs are building new business models such as smart grids and smarter transportation and are looking to apply technologies in new kinds of innovation for their companies. These findings are consistent with what IBM is seeing in the marketplace, around both standardised technology and new business models.”