By R "Ray" Wang on January 18, 2010
The Era Of CIO Dictatorships Ends With 2009
Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it. The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and the massive number of IT failures have rapidly changed the role of the CIO. Saddled with the burden of maintaining legacy projects and faced with a shortage in budget and resources, businesses now move around the IT team as they must meet a flurry of business requirements. CIO’s have lost a lot of control in guiding how technology is used in the enterprise because the world of consumer tech has out innovated enterprise class technologies.
CIO’s And Their Organizations Challenged By The Pace Of Change In The 2010’s
Similar to this past decade, organizations will face massive amounts of change in the next decade. While change is nothing new to CIO’s and their organizations, the velocity of change has increased – to a point where the rate of obsolescence outpaces the rate of change. Conversations with over 200 CIO’s this year reveal an anxiety in remaining nimble, cutting costs, and just keeping up with change. CIO’s must rapidly respond to disruptive forces in the market, workforce dynamics, business models, and pace of technology adoption (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Four areas of change responsible for major disruptions in today’s organizations

(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)
The Bottom Line – The CIO Role Shifts To Match Next Gen Enterprise Requirements
What’s the role of the CIO in this next gen enterprise?
Related
Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged 2010, application development, Architecture, business drivers, Business Models, Business process, change, CIO, Cloud Computing, disruptive, disruptive technologies, enteprise architecture, enterprise applications, enterprise apps, Enterprise apps strategy, Enterprise architecture, Enterprise Business Apps, enterprise software, future of business, information management, Infrastructure, macro conditions, next gen cio, pace of technology adoption, procurement, project management, SaaS, security, skill shifts, software as a service, Sourcing, user strategy, vendor management, workplace dynamics

R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research, Inc. He’s the author of the popular business strategy and technology blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”. Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at institutions such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. His best selling book, Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press provides insights on why 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000.
Wang is a prominent dynamic keynote speaker, research analyst, and industry commentator working with clients to transform their business models using exponential technologies. He’s spoken around the world at almost every tech related conference including keynotes for tens of thousands of people and intimate executive settings such as Davos. Ray’s clients include a majority of the Fortune 500 and Global 200.
Ray is well quoted in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, FoxBusiness, CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, CGTN, Tech Crunch, Business Week, and Fortune. He has thrice won the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) Analyst of the Year Award and has repeatedly been in the #1 slot in the AR Power 100 list for over 10 years. Ray resides in Silicon Valley when not traveling 500,000 miles a year in the air.