CIOs More Focused on Business Than Ever

As the role of the CIO itself transforms so do the types of projects they lead across their enterprises, which will allow CIOs to focus less time and resources on running internal infrastructure and more time helping their companies grow revenue. CIOs are transforming their infrastructure to focus more on innovation and business value rather than simply running IT.

Top Projects

In the study, 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. These include:

Business intelligence and analytics, Virtualization, Green IT, Service oriented architectures (SOA), Service management, and Cloud computing.

CIOs are also 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.

“You can see that they are really a combination of business and technology so at any given point in time in the morning they may be focused on (technology) and in the in afternoon they may be working on a five year plan for the business,” said Ban. “So, they wear many hats during the day, they change roles on a regular basis, and whatever comes up will be what they have to focus on.”

About the Study

The 2009 CIO Study is part of the IBM C-Suite Study Series. Published by the IBM Institute for Business Value, the C-Suite Study Series publishes in-depth studies for CEOs, CFOs, Chief Human Resource Officers and most recently, Chief Supply Chain Officers. The CIO Study included 2,598 face-to-face interviews conducted over four months from January to April 2009. In addition to the detailed personal feedback, IBM also incorporated financial metrics and detailed statistical analysis into the findings.