The CIO’s battle for survival

I approached Dr Robert Plant, Vice-Chairman, Department of Computer Information Systems at University of Miami (and contributor to both the Harvard Business Review and Wall Street Journal’s Expert Leadership Group) to ask what he sees as the major challenges within the way businesses need to approach questions of data.

“The major issue for corporate data centres is how CIOs can justify their existence in the light of cloud providers such as azure and AWS, the metrics of cost, security, scale, staffing and redundancy are increasingly against them,” he told me over Skype. “Migration to the cloud is not a question of if, it’s a question of when. CIOs must focus on this migration strategy and execute seamlessly to stay relevant.”

It’s not a popular view – Dr Plant authored The Disappearing Data Centre for HBR in 2009 and is the first to admit that it “did not win many fans from the Data Centre Managers”.

While it might not make for a reassuring message, it’s most likely one worth listening to. As the main infrastructure of modern business becomes increasingly virtual, the clever CIOs are busy reaping the benefits flexibility offers in keeping overheads low and taking an agile approach to staffing, budget and performance. However, the really clever CIOs will probably also be aware that the powers that be are seeing a similar shift in staffing and sourcing solutions.

So in 2014, while there are huge shifts taking place in businesses’ IT makeup, it’s probably a good time for CIOs to be measuring the impact they are able to bring to the business. Is it them or the technology that is getting discussed at board level? And if it is them, is the talk about how smooth their involvement has turned out to be, or the opposite?

Education to stay relevant
Internet World (17-19 June, ExCeL London) will once again be hosting the Big Data Show, and when it comes to staying relevant, it looks like there are some great pieces of educational content to help both the CIO and the rest of the team.

Big Data Partnership will be running a series of events during the show, aimed at a variety of different experience and management levels. Their Masterclass series caters for senior management and business leaders (Big Data Concepts), IT professionals and decision-makers (Hadoop Masterclass) and Software Engineers and Data Scientists (Data Science Concepts).

Meanwhile, Big Data Partnership will also be running a hands on Hack Day, working with the open music encyclopaedia MusicBrainz to create a ‘real time’ music recommendation engine. The Big Data Show will also feature leading industry advice from luminaries of IBM:
Gareth Mitchell-Jones, Big Data & Analytics Practice Lead, IBM will be discussing ‘The case for Big Data & Analytics’. This session acknowledges the power that the right combination of data, infrastructure and
talent can give a business, but asks a common question: where do you start? Gareth will discuss some of the use cases that could provide your first steps into big data.

Dr Philip Thomas, Big Data & Analytics Software Client Architect, IBM will present ‘Innovations in Big Data & Analytics’. Where you can hear about IBM’s latest developments in big data & analytics technology - including Enterprise class Hadoop, streaming analytics and the Watson family - with real-life examples of how organisations are using these to drive transformation in our world today.

Ian Radmore, Big Data Specialist, IBM will talk about ‘Moving beyond Hadoop’
Using live client examples, Ian will show how real-time analytics provide a powerful extension to any big data platform and is applicable across many types of information and real-world problems to deliver tangible business value.

See the full education programme at
www.internetworld.co.uk and register for your free visitor pass.