From my perspective
* Application Integration - Now that all this software is installed, how come it doesn't all talk and interact?
* Pressure to outsource
* Changing Business priorities

posted June 22, 2008

I like Michael Oryszak's first bullet point. I have worked at various companies where they have bought other companies and did not integrate them well, or did not integrate them at all. For example, when you have bought 5 different companies running 5 similar applications for the same type of customer, you need to either integrate them or stop using 4 of them and have the customer migrate (hopefully seamlessly) to the best one.

I think another challenge to IT organizations is due diligence in buying other companies. I've seen too many companies do the due diligence on the financial end, but not on the IT end. For example, when Company A buys Company B, either the people at Company B leave immediately in fear that they are going to lose their job, or they are laid off all together. Unfortunately there is a good chance there isn't documentation to fall back on. Then the IT people in company A discover that Company B was running too lean - using cheap gray market hardware/software, cheap end-of-life hardware/software, etc, thus why Company B was "profitable" in the first place. Company A also finds out they have to forklift upgrade Company B's IT equipment/software or face losing customers because the software/equipment is close to dropping dead and not having any support from vendors. Thus when Company A has to forklift upgrade, they find out Company B isn't going to be a profitable enterprise after all.

posted June 22, 2008

Retaining talent.
With the challenges IT faces in todays economic conditions of being a scapegoat for cost savings CIOs have the challenge of retaining top flight talent.

posted June 22, 2008

What keep’s CIO at night: Industry trends which affect IT (an ADDITION to great points above):

Infrastructure and energy deficit:
- Energy consumption: more computing power, more data storage, more cooling, skyrocketing energy and floor space for IT\Datacenters.
- Traffic, especially media, growth (Security video, Business video conference, YouTube ) – network resources overloaded

M&A activity:
- What systems to keep \ integrate\ abandon. How to deal with licenses and vendor support in each decision.
- keep people during the transition
- Location of the integrated department

Outsourcing IT to corporate Shared Service Center or outsource to external provider.
- defining SLA metrics with the operating units using SS services
- turning cost center to profit center
- establishing new processes
- finding location

Move to on line (cloud) services
- Free on line services offer more speed and integration with home desktop than corporate applications. Increased risk of sensitive data leak.
Work from home (thanks to the oil cost)
- Access and support for remote workers

posted June 23, 2008

Hi. I agree with the proposed list of biggest issues. I would like to add only one but looking from my perspective, very important and time and effort consuming: this is continuous growing of audit requirements. Lot of effort of CIO's is now addressed into the every kinds of audits: SOX, infrastructure, risk, change management et., etc. I think, at the moment CIO of big companies (not only IT business but other businesses as well, are involved a lot of their time into fulfillment of audit requirements. From my perspective, this time consuming audit requirements are not reflecting full requirements of owners of companies, a lot of work effort is consumed by not well addressed tasks and requirements of consulting companies, providing such audits for organizations.

posted June 27, 2008

In addition to finding an keeping talent, organizations must grow that talent into leadership roles.
As the workforce population ages companies are suffering a lack of experienced leaders, and many organizations are finding out too late they needed to identify and groom employees to fill those positions.

posted June 27, 2008

This could go on to an endless discussion - as many CIO's may lead organizations to. :)

The question is - how did the CIO become a CIO from his past, and what is expected of him.
Subsequently what is a long-term vision that he shows to the larger organization and how does he tackle aged baggage... and so on and so forth. There's really a plethora.

When I read this question - this is what came up ...

*People
*People
*People :)

- People with a short-term focus leading organizations.
- People with strong heterodoxy and counter-baggage
- People with low experience, missing value system and selfish objectives.

(And the existence of such people is irrespective of the organizational hierarchy)

The best organizations would use a benevolent face of Human Resource practices, to help business overcome these challenges. A smart and judicious recipe for success will be using best practices, derived from human resource practices, information technology standards and business needs, in the specific business scenario.

The need to understand generational discrimination, cross-cultural discrimination and proliferation of various process standards and frameworks in the past decade, is crucial, before putting forth visions that are short-lived.

The extent of insomnia amongst CIO's are merely a manifestation of the vision that they may set forth for themselves, and how they involve the larger organization.

For example, a CIO may sleep well, during organizational churns, if his vision is to destroy the existing state, and build upon it later. He is anyways, achieving his short term goal..

Application intergration is indeed a challenge - but is that what the CIO will do himself, all alone by himself - or is there a dearth of Application Integration experts (People) from within the organization?

Why would a CIO not be empowered enough to decide where he wants to get his job done from - why does "outsourcing" become the one-size-fits-all answer for every other investor (People) looking for a quick buck?

How close is the CIO to the market and what is his value proposition? Is the market facing value proposition balanced against the organizational stability required for realizing the guidance to market? Does the CEO or President or Board (People) alive to this trade-off?


Bottomline - several new age CIO's need to mature. Competencies required for running a smaller business unit, requires much less thought leadership, than it would to run global IT organizations.

Challenging for change (not for the heck of it) , breaking the thought barrier (making it market facing, people facing etc) and utilizing the most precious asset - the human brain - may help closing the missing link...

Maturity of CIO's from their past to present, may help cure insomnia.

posted June 22, 2008

Skills shortage and moreover how to retain the people with them.

posted June 22, 2008

Eric,
I think the biggest concern of all managers or CXO's now will be how to derisk their functions or operations against external factors like the oscillating world economy, possible influence of other countries, government regulations affecting the specific industry one is in or generally. Add to this the ever existing issues like people management, competition management, value enhancement, finding future growth providers and customer exhilaration. A CXO has to think about the possible risks much ahead and not the activities that need to be done the next day. Next day's possible activities would have been already thought about and systems put in place.
regards..

posted June 22, 2008

IT is no more a support function in any organisation any more. As systems become key to operations, business is constantly looking at IT to implement the change or help them innovate.. So IT has to become an integral part of the business rather than a business unit.

IT organisations are moving from technology provider to process leaders in the organisation. Their key asset today is company and business-process knowledge.

IT Organisation's new description includes - to use the knowledge to manage the technology and service to bring maximum business benefits.

On the ground level depending upon IT org's needs the challenges have been mentioned in the earlier answers.

posted June 23, 2008

Top challenges in IT organizations and top concerns of CIO's are:

- Business Requirements Realizations
- Pressures to Outsource
- Subcontracts' Management
- Products' Integration
- M & A Programs
- IT Metrics.

Noga Yinon

posted June 24, 2008

Basically cloudsourcing. - Managing Software and Hardware as a service through strong Service Level Management (of which SLA's are one component)

posted June 24, 2008

The ageing workforce and lack of emphasis on math/science and basic reading and writing skills in our public schools.
Lack of business focus within the IT community. This advances individual agendas within IT management detrimental to the success of projects and the entire organization.
Software that replaces old exceptions with new ones.

posted June 26, 2008

-Retaining the best talent
-out the competion market, you have to deliver the product right first time, this itself a biggest challenge to any organisation

posted June 26, 2008

To become agile in the emerging tight market situation. Many will not survive without a serious look at themselves.

What worked earlier, may not yield magic results tomorrow.

IT organization must learn lessons from other industries like Automobile, Airlines and Supermarkets.

posted June 27, 2008