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7/09/2018

By Peter High. Published on Forbes

Tom Keiser has been the CIO of two multi-billion dollar corporations: L Brands for five and a half years, and Gap, Inc. for four years. After his second CIO post, he was promoted to Executive Vice President of Global Product Operations for Gap where he was responsible for building a seamless inventory operating model and technology platform to deploy in each global brand of the company. The objective of seamless inventory was to significantly reduce stranded inventory and improve margin for each of the company’s global brands by leveraging advanced analytics to better plan, buy, allocate, replenish, and price product across all markets and channels.

Following this experience, he decided to try a familiar role in a very different setting: in May of 2016, he became CIO of Zendesk, the roughly half a billion dollar revenue provider of a customer service and engagement platform. After a bit more than two years in that role, he was promoted to chief operating officer of the company while retaining his IT strategy. Now he is responsible for IT, security and compliance, enterprise data and analytics, product technology operations, and go-to-market, among other items. He describes his current post, his career journey, and the trends that particularly excite him as he looks to the future in this expansive interview.

(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link).

Peter High: You are the Chief Operating Officer of Zendesk. Could you provide a brief overview of Zendesk’s business?

Tom Keiser: Zendesk is a dedicated customer service and engagement platform that is focused on customers and how customers want to interact with the businesses that they do business with. We were founded nearly eleven years ago and started off as a company primarily focused on digital, e-commerce, and [small and medium sized] businesses. We have grown into what is now a $500 million company and we are rapidly expanding into larger enterprises

High: Can you talk about your role as Chief Operating Officer? What is within your purview?

Keiser: I stepped into this role this past August after serving as the CIO for approximately a year and a half. Overall, my role is a combination of operations, go-to-market, and customer-facing functions. I still maintain many of my CIO responsibilities including the [overall] IT function, security and compliance analytics, all the business analytics we run the business on, as well as our tech-ops organization, which is the underpinnings of all our products. Additionally, as I moved into the COO role, I took over our go-to-market functions, which is our sales operation, as well as our customer experience organization.

High: Zendesk went public a few years back, after having grown dramatically over the years prior. Could you talk about the significant changes that have occurred since you joined the company a little over two years ago?

Keiser: As companies move out of the startup mode, go through the IPO, and then go public, building out their capabilities in the process, you go through evolutions just like everything does as you grow up. My time at Zendesk has been about putting down a foundation for us to be able to grow unimpeded. This involves making sure that we have the right processes, technologies, and organizational constructs to be able to evolve and grow.

The world of customer service that we are in changes dramatically every year. People’s expectations continuously advance in terms of what they expect from the businesses that they interact with. While you can have a nice left to right roadmap, the reality is you have got to keep adjusting. When you are growing as quickly as we are, and you are in a space that is growing and changing, you must have a solid and agile foundation to be able to adjust to that.

My time here has been focused on ensuring that we have that foundation through the technologies that our employees are operating on and making sure that they are as productive as possible. This applies whether you are in design, engineering, one of the sales functions, or one of the support functions. Additionally, I am focused on ensuring that our external and customer-facing components are evolving appropriately along with the product.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

6/25/18

By Peter High. Published on Forbes

Lenovo’s Kim Stevenson Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Solutions division has had a variety of roles in information technology. At technology behemoths such as IBM, EDS, and HPE, she worked on internal operations, but also gained her first exposure to customers who were technology executives. At Intel, she went from General Manager of IT Operations and Services to Chief Information Officer.

As CIO, she had an strong external customer orientation based on her experience prior to that. As a result, she quickly gained invitations to join boards. (She has served on the boards of Cloudera, Riverbed Technology, and she currently serves on the board of the wealth management and private banking company, Boston Private.) During her time as CIO, she was in the first class of Forbes CIO Innovation Award winners based on her team’s contribution of more than $1 billion in value to the company based on analytics. She would eventually rise to Chief Operating Officer, Client, IoT and System Architecture Group at Intel.

When she joined Lenovo in March of 2017, she did so with a remarkably rich set of experiences across the technology sector. As a result, she is an unusually well connected and highly regarded in the IT community. Now that she serves CIOs as clients again, she sees three things that CEOs and boards expect of CIOs: re imagining customer experience, driving productivity inside the enterprise, and delivering new products and services. She and her team are poised to help CIOs deliver all three, as she notes (among other themes) herein.

To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please click this link.

Peter High: You are now the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Solutions division of Lenovo. Could you describe your role and your responsibilities?

Kim Stevenson: At Lenovo, we aligned our Data Center Solutions division with our important customer segments, which is how we run our business. Each of those customer segments then report up into my organization.

We have the classic data center infrastructure segment, which is servers, networks, storage, and the like. We also have a high-performance computing artificial intelligence segment, as well as a hyperscale segment. We have software-defined infrastructure as the emerging business model for enterprises, which is a high growth opportunity for Lenovo. In January, we added two new divisions for IoT and telco, both of which relate to the rollout of 5G.

The telco market is at a fundamental inflection point. We want to help drive a new, efficient infrastructure into the telco space. This plays into IoT, which will be all endpoints that are going to be connected in the world. And of course, there are data center implications for having multiple, new types of endpoints connecting into the network.

High: You were a former buyer of technology as the CIO of Intel. You rose beyond that role and became the Chief Operating Officer of the Client, IoT, and Systems Architecture Group. Now you are on the other side of the table as someone delivering to CIOs among others. How do you engage the customer set, and what was the transition like from one side of the table to the other?

Stevenson: Even before I joined Intel, I was with EDS and HP Enterprise Services running IT for customers and selling IT services to the CIO organization. When I moved to Intel to run internal IT, I felt like I was becoming my customer. Having that 360-degree view served me extraordinarily well. There were days when I thought to myself, “Why would anyone try to sell you this? It is just not practical.” There were also days that I felt I could understand more of what was possible from an innovation vector because I had seen many different types of accounts.

This is the next chapter, which is coming back to the business side. Now more than ever, the voice of the CIO in every company is becoming more strategic and more critical to the raw execution of the company. There is no business process in any company today that executes without some form of IT at its core. When I look at the role of the CIO today, I see three things that the board of directors and the CEO expect.

  1. They expect the CIO to re-imagine and define the customer experience.
  2. They expect extreme productivity inside of their corporation. Every CEO wants 20 percent more to the bottom line than they are getting today.
  3. They expect that they invent and deliver new products and services to allow them to grow in the company.

At Lenovo, I focus on helping the IT organization deliver on those three fundamental strategic priorities that exist in every company.

High: Can you expand on the translation of those general ideas to the way in which you are doing that in concert with the business?

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

 

by Peter High, published on Forbes

5-9-2016

Like other companies, the IT function at Intuit used to be one that the rest of the company loved to complain about. It was an easy scapegoat for a number of issues. Atticus Tysen has been at Intuit for 14 years, and for the first 11 years of that experience, he was outside of IT and was quite familiar with the complaints. He held roles in Product Management, in Engineering and Operations, and in Enterprise Business Solutions. Rather than pile on as others complained, Tysen elected to do something about it by joining IT as senior vice president and chief information officer three years ago.

Since then, Tysen has revamped the function such that it has more of a product leadership mentality rather than that of the order takers of old. He has also ensured that IT is transparent in its communications so that the value it contributes is more readily understood by the company and its customers. Tysen covered all of the above while also offering advice for CIOs of non-technology centric companies who might wish to emulate some of what he has done in the transformation he has led.

(To listen to an extended audio version of this interview, please click this link.This is the seventh article in the Business CIO series, featuring executives who have emerged from other corporate functions to become CIOs. Read past interviews with the likes of Marriott CIO Bruce Hoffmeister and World Bank CIO Stephanie von Friedeburg. To read future articles in this series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: Atticus, yours is an interesting background. You have been with Intuit for about fourteen years and have been CbIO for more than two and one-half of those years. In the interim between the time you started at the company and two and one-half years ago, you held a variety of roles: product development roles; Vice President of Enterprise Business Solutions; and Engineering and Operations roles. As a result, for the majority of your time at Intuit you were a consumer of IT, as opposed to a leader of it. I know from our past conversations that you have said that one of the main reasons you joined IT was that you kept hearing complaints that IT was the source of many problems, so rather than echo the complaints, you decided to join the team. Can you talk a little bit about that insight and the journey from outside IT to leading it?

Atticus Tysen: One of the big things I discovered being part of IT is the hard job of balancing running all of the existing systems while you are trying to build out the new future. Before I got into IT I did not understand that. All I understood was the latest request I was asking for. We have a legacy as a company– we are a little over thirty years old— and our business model has evolved. We have many different layers of technology, as does every company of our age, and that context is important to understand. The IT organization has to operate all of that well, because that is serving customers and different segments of our customers. If any one of those systems is not performing that means we are not performing for some set of customers. So while operating that flawlessly we also have to build out the future, start to move people to SaaS offerings and migrate the company. It is a difficult trade off to accomplish. I think it is hard to appreciate that on a day to day basis until you really get in and understand it from the inside.

High: Obviously Intuit itself is a technology business: what you are selling is, in so many cases, technology. The other roles I suggested outside of IT are technical and you have made the point, as others who are CIOs and technology jobs have made as well, that you are surrounded by people who feel like they could do your job better than you can. I know from our past conversations, Atticus, you have said they are probably right at least in segments of what you do, but probably not for the entire thing. I wonder if you could also explain that rationale.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

by Peter High, published on Forbes

11-9-15

Donagh Herlihy is one of the first Chief Information Officers in the US to take on additional responsibilities. He did so when he took over the Human Resources function at Wrigley while he was still CIO nearly 15 years ago. Since then, he has been the CIO and Vice President of Supply Chain Strategy and Planning at Wrigley, CIO and Senior Vice President of IT and eCommerce at Avon, and now he is the Executive Vice President Digital and CIO at Bloomin’ Brands, which is a $4.5 billion revenue casual dining restaurant company based in Tampa, Florida.

Donagh’s catholicity has been remarkable, and he owes it to a combination of good timing, a desire to think of business outcomes first and IT second, and simply putting his hand up to let others know that he had this ambition. He believes others will likely follow in his footsteps, as he notes in this interview, and he offers a variety of lesson for those who wish to do so.

(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 25th article in the CIO-plus series. To read the prior 24, please visit this link. To listen to future interviews in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: I thought we might begin with Bloomin’ Brands. Could you take a moment to describe the business?

Donagh Herlihy: Bloomin’ Brands is one of the world’s largest casual dining restaurant companies with about 100,000 team members and we are headquartered in Tampa, Florida.

Our portfolio of brands includes Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill and the fine dining concept Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar. We have close to 1,500 restaurants throughout 48 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and 22 countries. We are listed on the NASDAQ with revenues of about $4.5 billion annually.

High: Your role at Bloomin’ Brands is Executive Vice President of Digital, in addition to holding the title of Chief Information Officer. The topic of digital, as broad as it is, is certainly very hot these days. Could you take a moment to describe your responsibilities as the head of Digital?

Herlihy: The mission of our digital innovation team at Bloomin’ Brands is to create consumer relevant digital solutions that drive traffic to our restaurants, increase customer satisfaction and enable an ongoing relationship between our customers and our brands. The team is very cross functional and as they transform important aspects of our business, they need a leader on the executive leadership team to support them. I am fortunate to have that responsibility, but I also work closely with the brand’s Presidents and our CMO.

To read the full article, please visit Forbes

In his Forbes Technovation column, Peter High examines how RIM missed the boat on the consumerization of IT

by Peter High, published on Forbes.com

11-08-2012

With the election in our rear view mirror, it is interesting to think about all that has come to pass over the last four years. Beyond the politics, however, I am reminded of how President Obama’s first election brought about perhaps the greatest product endorsement in history.  Though Presidents are not supposed to endorse one product or company over another or appear in advertisements for any company, on January 7, 2009, days before his inauguration and in the face of having to give up his personal phone for security reasons as his predecessors had done, the President-elect said, “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” This was a product that was of such great use to him, and represented his connection to the life he was leaving, that he would force his Executive Office of the President (EOP) to change protocol so that he could keep his cherished device.  This is the sort of endorsement that companies dream about.

The truth is, as of early 2009, many business executives agreed that their BlackBerries were indispensable.  RIM had done a wonderful job of securing their devices, making them business-ready, while also focusing on making BlackBerry the premier communication device.  The keyboard made it ideal for emails and text messages in addition to being a robust phone.  Moreover, these devices were available through a variety of carriers, so companies did not necessarily need to change plans in order to purchase the latest and greatest devices from RIM.

On June 28, 2007, around the time Obama was crisscrossing the nation trying to secure the Democratic nomination, a different kind of phone was released with quite a hefty marketing budget, as Apple released its first iPhone.  Research in Motion (RIM – the maker of the BlackBerry) dismissed this new entity as a non-rival, as the iPhone was a personal device, and not something a serious businessman or businesswomen would deign to use for work purposes, to say nothing of a president.  The iPhone had all kinds of “weaknesses”.  In addition to the lack of a “real” keyboard, it was only available through one carrier, and a carrier that did not have the reputation for reliable service, especially in key business communities like New York and San Francisco.  Moreover, what CIO would ever let the iPhone access the company’s most sensitive data?  What RIM did not realize was that this was the tipping point of what has come to be referred to as consumerization of IT.

Though CIOs feared what a device like this would mean in terms of securing the network of the company, the truth is it was often they  who were the first to play around with iPhone, as CIOs are always interested in the newest technology toy to play around with.  The smart ones realized that it was so easy to use that it was a way to start a conversation with the rest of the organization.  If Luddite CEOs could grasp the power of using apps for everything from seeing their appointments for the day, to checking into flights, to reading news and analyst reports, they might see an application of the device to their company.

To read the remainder of the article, please visit Forbes.com.

Explore more pieces in the Technovation column here.

Kalhan Koul, Metis Strategy Associate, analyzes the shift in trends highlighted by participants in The Forum on World Class IT

by Kalhan Koul
May 2012

Please click here to download the PDF of this article

Introduction

As the pace of technology progresses rapidly, it has become vital for CIOs and IT leaders to keep an eye out for transformative technologies that help increase efficiency, drive revenue, and more. Thus, since 2010, we have asked interviewees on Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT podcast series to provide their thoughts on upcoming trends in IT; our team has tracked the results and elucidated several interesting patterns, some of which will be highlighted in this paper.

Overall, 51 individuals, ranging from active CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, CFOs, CAOs, professors in IT-related fields, among others, provided their input concerning future trends. The graphs in this article demonstrate which areas IT thought leaders believed to be most compelling in the near future.

Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the top trends identified over the course of the podcast series, and consist of some of the “usual suspects” such as cloud computing, mobility, etc. Figure 3 provides a breakdown of trends identified in 2010 vs. 2011, and Figure 4 takes the data a step further to demonstrate the change in percentage of identified trends. Together, these charts convey some interesting revelations, such as the emergence of trends like the consumerization of IT, the increased role of IT in the business, and the power of computing, as well as the decline or stagnation of trends such as social media. Although the identification of prominent and emerging trends provides interesting food for thought in itself, simply identifying trends without a broader context does not do the insights justice; thus, this article will further build upon these insights and present context concerning the emergence, decline, or persistence of specific trends in order to provide IT leaders greater visibility into what technologies will gain a foothold and should be considered sooner rather than later.

Figure 1: Top Trends Identified by Interviewees
N = 51

 

 

 

 

Where the chart above provides the number of interviewees identifying trends, the chart below demonstrates trends identified as a percentage of interviewees.

Figure 2: Top Trends Identified – Percentage of Interviewees
N = 51

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top few trends identified by the podcast interviewees, as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, have been prominent in the IT realm for some time, and for good reason. Cloud computing, which essentially provides shared resources, software, and information on demand, enables increased flexibility in IT spend, as it entails not only a significant reduction in fixed costs, but the ability to focus time and resources on better supporting the business and aligning to their objectives, a proposition tantalizing to many CIOs. For example, Curt Edge, CIO of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, states that “about 4-5 years ago [prior to moving to the cloud], we spent about 80% of our time working on maintenance …today we spend anywhere from 60-65% of our time working with the businesses.[1] ” It should be noted that some of the identified trends, such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and virtualization remain closely linked to cloud computing: virtualization enables the movement of major infrastructure components to the cloud, and SaaS essentially acts as a subset of cloud computing, with software and associated data being centrally hosted in the cloud. For the purposes of this paper, these trends will be treated as distinct entities despite their linkage.

As mobile technologies improve at a rapid pace, employees have the ability to utilize mobile devices to conduct business and access internal networks, so that they may be productive anywhere. For instance, David McCue, CIO of Computer Sciences Corporation, states that “we’re all beginning to appreciate what the convergence of the last few years of ubiquitous available bandwidth, thick pipes, and powerful handheld devices means…we’ve learned that being able to do anything, anytime, anywhere is the direction we’re going.[2] ” Furthermore, what has partially enabled the advent of mobility has been the consumerization of IT, where a plethora of ever-improving mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablets have begun to permeate the business world.

Taken together, these trends do not seem surprising at all, as they have been widely recognized in a variety of publications and numerous companies have begun implementing projects in relation to them; however, further delving into the data provides significant insights into the shifting priorities of IT leaders (see Figure 3 and Figure 4).

Figure 3: Trends Identified in 2010 and 2011
N = 48

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evidently, the data illustrates significant changes in trends identified between 2010 and 2011. Figure 4 provides the difference in percentage from 2010 to 2011, and reveals several interesting details concerning trend trajectories.

Figure 4: Change in Trend Identification from 2010 to 2011 – Percentage of Interviewees
N = 48

 

Social Media and Collaboration Technologies Losing Steam; Consumerization of IT on the Rise

First, the number of interviewees identifying social media and collaboration technologies (both internally and externally facing) as a major IT trend decreased dramatically; over the past two years, this trend dropped from first to fourth overall (see Figure 1).

So, what has caused this dramatic decrease in recognition? Some plausible explanations include the increased awareness of social media platforms, such as Facebook, that were more front-of-mind due to their exponential growth in use by the general population, or by the significant level of media exposure these platforms received. Another explanation could be that organizations recognized the potential of these platforms early and sought to implement technologies to take advantage of them. For instance, Microsoft witnessed a significant increase in sales of SharePoint [3]  (which enables collaboration), indicating that more companies have sought this type of solution, and have addressed this trend. On the flipside, however, as detailed in a recent InformationWeek article, numerous internal social networking initiatives have faced lackluster adoption [4] ; one possible consequence could be that IT leaders have shifted focus elsewhere. Whatever the explanation, this precipitous decline in focus on social media remains an interesting topic that merits further monitoring.

It comes as no surprise that consumerization of IT, which concerns the impact that consumer-originated technologies have on enterprises, has witnessed the greatest increase in being identified as a trend from 2010 to 2011. The rise of tablet technologies likely acts as one of the primary drivers for this increase, particularly the release of the Apple iPad. Although consumerization of IT has been increasing in prominence as consumer technology becomes more sophisticated, it appears that the release and the widespread adoption of the iPad (approximately 55 million sold to date [5] ) has opened the floodgates and has caused this topic to considerably rise in prominence. In fact, Metis Strategy has advised several clients who have sought to implement tablets within their own organization in recent years; overall, despite concerns of security of information in adopting tablets and other consumer originated technologies, the majority of organizations have found benefits through a combination of increased productivity, employee satisfaction, and reduced cost. Furthermore, as the capabilities of consumer technologies expand, we have also seen an increase in organizations employing “Bring Your Own Device” programs, which leverage not only the familiarity employees have with their own devices, but the reduction in support necessary for these devices. For instance, Bruce Leidal, CIO of CareStream Health, states that “people own their own devices and they would just as soon use those for work…and we’re putting in the right infrastructure so that we can make sure that that happens. I think the benefits [are that] we have basically eliminated all of the support costs…it reduces our call volume and also takes a lot of noise out of our support environment. [6] ” Thus, overall, the rise in consumerization of IT makes sense given the parallel advancements and capabilities of consumer technology.

IT Augments Involvement with the Business; Power of Computing and Analytics Increasing in Importance

An additional trend that is rising in prominence includes an increased IT role in the business. In numerous organizations Metis Strategy has advised, IT has historically been regarded as an “order-taker”, and not seen as integral to driving the business; however, as technology becomes vital in how business operates in contemporary times, we have begun to see a shift towards increasing IT involvement in the business. Although this trend has yet to become pervasive, it appears to be a logical successor to other prominent trends. For instance, we have seen several of our clients try to unburden their resources by adopting cloud computing solutions, significantly increase virtualization, or leverage consumerization of IT programs such as ‘Bring Your Own Device’; not only do these initiatives decrease fixed costs related to hardware, but they drastically reduce ongoing maintenance and support of the hardware. Consequently, IT employees have increased opportunity to partner with the business so as to focus on value-oriented and revenue driving initiatives. For example, Jim Knight, EVP and Global CIO of Chubb & Son, states that “what we have found the last couple of years is not only are we the fuel for managing expenses…we’re also the engine for the business…because technology can get us there…there are absolutely expectations of us that our operations will be streamlined and [as] cost-effective as possible, but they are also investing in programs to bolster up the business. [7]” In addition, as the general consumer of technology becomes more tech savvy, it becomes necessary for businesses to connect with these consumers utilizing the same technology; as a result, IT can naturally team with other functions to drive business’ strategy through leveraging new tech-enabled customer touch points.

When explaining the power of computing and analytics as a rising trend, it makes sense to take a step back and assess the progress of technology as a whole. For instance, Moore’s Law, one measure of technology progress, states that the number of transistors that can affordably be placed on an integrated chip doubles approximately every two years (and is hence associated with growth in processing speed, memory, etc.), and illustrates the dramatic pace at which computing improves. Furthermore, recent developments where research teams have taken significant strides in quantum computing (e.g., IBM physicists at the Watson Research Center advancing superconducting qubits [8]) indicate that a new era in the scale of computing power may not be too far off. However, the real appeal lies in what can be done with this computing power, and how it can be utilized to drive business. June Drewry, former CIO of Chubb Insurance and Aon Corporation, states that “over the years…we’ve collected so much data that we’re not sure we know how to make information out of it in some cases; well, now we’re learning, and now there’s a thirst for it in the business. [9]”

The ability to process and analyze massive amounts of data, currently referred to as Big Data in IT circles, to form conclusions that can be acted upon will be invaluable, allowing businesses to discern customer behavior and other patterns. One of the reasons why this capability will be so valuable derives from the fact that many correlations that can be discovered through this type of analytics are not intuitive in nature. For instance, the New York Times recently published an article detailing how Target was able to utilize statistical correlations to predict which of its consumers were pregnant, and thus create tailored promotions to that demographic; other correlations included finding that newly-married individuals are more likely to begin purchasing a new type of coffee, or when individuals divorce, they tend to change brands of beer [10]. These behaviors do not appear to have inherently intuitive explanations, yet they exist and can be discovered and leveraged through analytics as enabled by computing power. Thus, the rise in the power of computing, and the correlated capability to conduct extensive analysis to discover valuable insights, will become a source of competitive advantage in the future, and likely explains why this trend has been increasing in prominence.

What the Future Holds

The analysis of the data obtained from the Forum on World Class IT podcast series reveals interesting insights concerning the trends that are front of mind for IT thought leaders. Not only does the data point to top trends such as cloud computing and mobility, but it also demonstrates trends rising in prominence such as consumerization of IT, the power of computing, and the increased IT role in the business, as well as trends on the decline such as social media.

From Metis Strategy’s perspective, we feel that IT’s increased role in the business, as well as the power of computing and analytics, will continue to be pertinent for business leaders, and will rise in prominence in the coming years. As many resource-consuming aspects of IT move to the cloud, such as purchasing and maintaining servers, network equipment, data center space, business applications, etc., IT organizations will thus be able to focus more on driving business strategy. One method of IT supporting the business, as we have seen in several organizations, entails enabling a strong business intelligence function, which is closely associated with the power of computing and analytics. As the amount of consumer information gathered and analyzed continues to grow, it will become essential for IT to develop methods to effectively consume and utilize this information to influence business decisions.

We feel that consumerization of IT, although experiencing a drastic increase in recognition in recent times, will level out somewhat. This is not to say that this trend has been ‘over-hyped’, but that the advantages of consumer-originated technology entering the business landscape have become much clearer recently, and many of our clients actively pursue opportunities to incorporate these technologies in their businesses. Similarly, when considering cloud computing, we feel this trend will begin to even out in the near future; cloud computing has been a topic of discussion among IT leaders for several years now, and we have begun to observe numerous companies moving ‘to the cloud’. In the coming years, cloud computing will be in essence ubiquitous, less of a consideration and more of a necessity, and will be intrinsic in how IT operates.

Overall, these insights bolster the notion that the landscape of IT continuously shifts and progresses at a rapid pace, and it becomes ever more important to keep our fingers on the pulse of IT and understand how these constantly emerging innovative technologies can be harnessed to propel business to a new level. Furthermore, what is truly exciting about all of these mentioned trends is that the majority of them provide tremendous opportunities for CIOs to collaborate with peers across the company, putting IT in the center of interesting conversations that could determine business direction. These trends have deep-seated business implications that should be taken advantage of to increase the curiosity and enthusiasm about how IT can help drive the business as opposed to merely supporting it.

Works Cited

[1] Peter High, “Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT,” podcast interview with Curt Edge, March 26, 2012.
[2] Peter High, “Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT,” podcast interview with David McCue, April 9, 2012.
[3] Mary Jo Foley, “Microsoft: We’re adding 20,000 new SharePoint users a day.” March 24, 2011. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-were-adding-20000-new-sharepoint-users-a-day/9011
[4] Healey, Mike. “Enterprise Social Networks: Dislike,” InformationWeek, February 2, 2012.
[5] Sam Gustin, “How Many iPads Can Apple Sell?” Time Business, March 16, 2012.
[6] Peter High, “Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT,” podcast interview with Bruce Leidal, November 21, 2011.
[7] Peter High, “Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT,” podcast interview with Jim Knight, January 3, 2012.
[8] Cade Metz, “IBM Busts Record for ‘Superconducting’ Quantum Computer,” Wired Enterprise, February 28, 2012.
[9] Peter High, “Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT,” podcast interview with June Drewry, December 5, 2011.
[10] Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” The New York Times, February 16, 2012.

Please click here to download the PDF of this article

Please visit The Forum on World Class IT to listen to the podcasts and trends mentioned in this article.

 

In an industry known for risk aversion, Great American Insurance’s Senior Vice President and CIO Piyush Singh has managed to innovate and transform the company’s entire operative platform, while simultaneously influencing its business philosophy.

by Peter High

09-01-2011

In Summary

Who: Piyush Singh, SVP/CIO of Great American Insurance

What: Singh has transformed the 4,000-employee company’s entire operative platform and influenced the company’s business philosophy.

Where: Cincinnati

Why: Singh’s experiences innovating in a traditionally risk-averse industry provides a recipe for success for any CIO grappling with governance, risk and compliance challenges.

Piyush Singh has been a CIO in the insurance industry for more than a decade, currently holding the title of senior vice president and CIO of Great American Insurance, as well as vice president of its parent company, American Financial Group in Cincinnati. Singh led a large-scale transformation of Great American’s entire operative platform and has had a major influence on its business philosophy. Under his leadership, the company’s IT role changed from that of custodian of a legacy IT environment to respected partner that participates in—and contributes to the success of—the businesses it supports. Great American has implemented a modern technology architecture as a foundation that will adapt for future growth and evolving business needs. CIO Insight contributor and Metis Strategy President Peter High recently spoke with Singh about how he balances his team’s role in innovation with governance, risk management and security—especially in light of the increasing demands of his colleagues and the company’s customers.

To read the remainder of this article, please visit CIO Insight.