CSC Smart Business UK Edition December - Perfect Partner
Perfect partner
New CSC CTO insists cloud services must be focused to deliver business goals
The role of the CIO is heading through ‘a perfect storm’ and will emerge radically changed and focussed as much on business goals as IT projects, believes CSC’s new EMEA CTO, Marc Silvester.
This makes it essential for CTOs to focus on their role as the CIO’s ‘pathfinder’, he insists. By identifying the technology that can, and will, deliver growth and positive business outcomes now, and in the future, CTOs can be the perfect partner for the CIO. Business developments beyond the CIO’s control have meant some may have unavoidably become partially distanced from business objectives, Silvester empathises, but it is the CTO’s role to help the CIO reconnect with the business.
“There’s never been a tougher time to be a CIO so they need a CTO to be a visionary pathfinder like never before,” he says. “With the Year 2000 problem a lot of applications were put under the control of business heads, rather than IT. So the CIO does not have as much of an overview as they would ideally need as department managers continue with potentially outdated software that can lead to information being held in silos across the company.
“At the same time, there are people on the board who have heard the hype around low cost computing and think, in a time of austerity, IT budget can be cut with impunity. They are expecting more for less from the CIO yet, at the same time, departments are buying their own software, without IT approval or knowledge. Executives bringing in their own devices which run on disparate platforms also potentially heightens the challenge. It really is the perfect storm.”
Connect to the cloud
Fittingly for a career which saw him rise from an engineer automating manufacturing systems at ICL to Global CTO at Fujitsu, Silvester believes there are huge opportunities in ‘industrialised’, mass produced applications. What is more, just as the CTO is required to help the CIO deliver a cost-effective IT strategy which delivers on specific business objectives, along comes a means of tapping in to these apps: the cloud. It could well be the answer to many objectives of CIOs but, Silvester cautions, CTOs need to avoid getting wrapped up in the technology and hype, and concentrate on delivering improved business outcomes.
Hence, while many talk about the cloud as a new type of infrastructure arrangement to access what are often still bespoke applications, Silvester believes IT providers should be promoting the end business benefits. To his mind, the most exciting development of the cloud is its ability to provide clients with a connection through which they can consume generic applications suited to a wide variety of everyday common business processes.
“CTOs know that there’s no need to build bespoke tools every time because there are plenty of very good software suites and applications widely available,” he says.
“So we’re now entering the age of ubiquitous applications which industrialise common processes. They give great value for repetitive, everyday business processes. A retailer paying its staff is very similar to a hotel chain paying its staff, they don’t need expensive unique systems; the same application can cater for them both.
“At the same time, we’re not only going to see different companies increasingly using the same applications, we’re also going to see a market place for common business outcomes. Buying a thousand credit card clearances is a good example. A company could do this through an application or, as will happen, they could do it through their cloud connection providing access to a common market place. This would allow them to buy a service, a business outcome, rather than be tied in to an application and its supplier.”
IT gets entrepreneurial
It is here where Silvester believes IT partners who combine consultancy, outsourcing and integration, are going to have to help CIOs deliver growth and drive innovation.
“The relationship between CTOs and their clients is going to have to become far closer, far more like a marriage, for want of a better word,” says Silvester.
“A lot of relationships have come about because a CIO decided they didn’t want to have all their infrastructure and applications managed in-house but wanted experts to do it more efficiently for them. We’re now going through a stage where IT companies are helping organisations to go through and consolidate their business activities.”
“The next stage, which we’re just entering, is where a service provider is going into a business in a CTO capacity and looking at its goals and helping the CIO deliver them. This means working hard with clients to understand what they are looking to achieve and then decided what services and, most importantly, which applications they need for this. Choosing which common processes can be achieved through generic applications and where they need specialist help developing a unique application is going to be crucial in this.”
Board room heroes
Although the current period is very tough for CIOs, with the right level of support from a CTO, they are actually in a better position than ever before to become integral to the running of a company. Through working with the guidance of an independent CTO they can re-establish improved control over the business’s IT systems and ensure these are aligned to the company’s objectives. Get it right and a CTO can help make a CIO a ‘board room hero’ through their unrivalled oversight of where the company is headed and how it will get there, Silvester believes.
“I’m making no bones about it being a tough time for CIOs but, with the right CTO support, they could actually come out of this in far better shape than just a couple of years ago,” he says. “CIOs are going to have to be more entrepreneurial to survive but if they do, they could become the heroes of the board room. Who else is going to know every aspect of the businesses goals as well as the nuts and bolt of how it operates to deliver on them?
“Great CIO-CTO partnerships are built over time and based on a good appreciation for the daily operational challenges, the business ambitions and applied innovation. Looking forward it’s clear that the Cloud is going to fundamentally change the solution landscape, that BigData will release the flood gates on previously locked information and Application subscriptions and broker services will enable a new generation of dynamic systems integration. A great partnership will translate these changes into business success.”
The challenges that lie ahead for the CIO to align business goals and IT strategy are significant but they do have the end-goal of potentially making the position indispensable to the board room. This makes it all the more necessary than ever for CIOs to seek out the best possible impartial advice from a CTO, Silvester believes. All recommendations have to be wholeheartedly dedicated to supporting the CIO rather than a partner equipment manufacturer or software developer. If the relationship is handled the right way, CTOs should have just one objective: to make their CIO shine.
Marc Silvester can be emailed at msilvester@csc.com