Vice President, Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, Jazz Semiconductor
Gone are the days when the CIOs were generally responsible for processes and practices supporting the flow of information. Today, the role of a CIO is fundamentally changed and he plays a key role in setting the strategy and its execution in any organization. The primary objective of today's CIOs is to infuse themselves in the business by becoming a part of the company's business, management, and leadership teams along with setting up the latest technology infrastructures required for smooth running of the organization's activities.
Well, there are quite a number of challenges, which keep a CIO awake in the night even in this era of technology revolution. Being in the era of groundbreaking technologies like virtualization and cloud computing, if you take my organization as an example, it's indeed difficult to manage about 300 servers we have in our data center. The challenge was how we can leverage the existing infrastructure to the maximum. How this can help the business to grow? However, virtualization proved to be a real boon, by reducing the expenditure to manage this infrastructure. I believe that deployment of technology is driven by the business requirements, and novel technologies can help you grow your business only when there is a genuine need. It need not be deployed for the sake of it.
A CIO brings unique value to the table by facilitating the company execute the activity without any hitch. Nowadays in a hi-tech company, usually the CTO and the CIO work in collaboration to set the technology road map for the organization. Plus, to understand the needs of the customer a CIO closely works with the sales team as well. Hence, changed role of today's CIO is to integrate the thoughts of CTO, CIO, the sales team, and the company's financial plans from this perspective, so that whatever innovative technology deployments truly makes business sense in terms of customer requirements, the company's internal resources, and in terms of the share holders' or investors' interests to achieve the goal of the organization. Today's CIO must juggle with all these.
Hence, today the role of a CIO is transformed into a technology solution provider. A successful CIO will communicate in simple terms how technology can promote the business.
I believe that there is no need for a CIO just to administer or to facilitate technology deployments of the organization. Even a proficient IT manager is sufficient for that purpose or even one can outsource all the technology related works to a low cost destination.
When my CEO approached me to come and join this company few years back, I insisted that as a CIO I must be a part of all decision-making and strategy setting processes of the company. Today I have the responsibility and the accountability to reengineer all the business processes across the company. And I prefer a person who knows more about the business than technology. That's why in my IT department I have people who understand the business part of the whole activity the company does than just technological and programming skills. According to me that's a positive part and this always worked in favor of the company's growth. A CIO should touch the core of the business to transform it technologically.
Undoubtedly, technology can be the major differentiator against competition in coming times. But leveraging the technology to gain the competitive advantage is the key thing. For instance, fundamentally, how can a CIO reduce the cycle time to convey the information related to the business to his colleagues situated across the globe to achieve their objectives? That's where the technology plays the role and this is the area where a 'Chief Information Officer' should start to focus on.