CIOs need to innovate

The role of the chief information officer (CIO) is changing, and organisations will need to adapt or die.

This is according to Hennie van Wijk, head of technology strategy for Absa Bank. Van Wijk has 28 years of experience building a comprehensive technology strategy for Absa.

Speaking at yesterday's CA IT Management Symposium Africa 2011 conference at the Sandton Convention Centre, van Wijk explained the importance of an IT strategy being aligned with that of business.

“IT has to adapt as business requirements change. The role of the CIO is constantly evolving,” noted van Wijk who added that the CIO today needs to be the innovator of change.

“The CIO was in previous years, expected to provide a 24/7, 365 days-a-year service to make sure that the business can run as smoothly as possible on the available IT infrastructure.

“However, CIOS are now expected to engage a lot more with business and to understand how the business operates.”

He says that this will have a direct impact on how technology is managed in the future and what its role will be to support the business strategy.

“Once you understand the business objective and understand the technology environment, the CIO then needs to do a SWOT analysis and define the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat in the business.

“It is then important to come up with key objectives, varying from managing SLAs, heading project management and delivering on time and according to budget.”

Van Wijk indicated that the biggest hurdles facing the CIO is maintaining business continuity. He used the example of comparing the priorities of enterprise IT service management to that of an airplane cockpit.

He said if the pilot does not understand how the controls in a cockpit work, the airplane would. Van Wijk said that without proper management and control, a business will fail.

“Business continuity management and disaster recovery is critical to the organisation. If the bank would go down for more than 48 hours, the business would significantly suffer and may not be able to recover.”

According to Gartner's 'Executive Programmes Worldwide' survey released this week, CIOs in the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region have set efficiency and consolidation as top priorities for 2011.

Gartner says EMEA CIOs report an average budget decline of 0.4% in 2011, while the UK is one of the hardest hit, reporting an average drop of 6.9%.

The research firm says 3% of CIOs have the majority of IT running in the cloud or on SaaS technologies, but over the next four years CIOs expect this number to increase to 43%.