Cree Inc. is a multinational manufacturer of semiconductor light-emitting diode (LED) materials and devices, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. Founded in 1987, the company has a market cap of $6.05 billion.

CIOs are witnessing the convergence of three trends, cloud storage, bring your own device ("BYOD") and the increasing demand for mobility. The increasing acceptance of cloud storage of general business information can help drive down infrastructure costs, nearly eliminate maintenance costs associated with storing data on-site, and make it easier for users to connect remotely. However, companies do need to be mindful of the data stored on remote servers, as companies are placing the security of the data stored in the cloud in the hands of others.

There is an increasing trend in the non-IT professionals becoming more adept at tech support, and are now more comfortable using their own devices professionally and troubleshooting on their own. By permitting employees to use their own devices for work, client hardware expenses can be reduced and costs supported significantly and more importantly, it is found that employees are more productive when they are more comfortable with a device they do not have to spend time "learning" a company's device.

These two trends feed into the overall demand for the ability to work outside the confines of the traditional office building, especially as companies are continuing to find ways to conduct business on a global scale. Companies and their employees need to seamlessly work from anywhere, anytime, using any device of their choice whether it's their desk in the United States or halfway across the world without any interruption in their work.

There are multiple, rapidly developing security threats on the horizon, so to avoid and address these threats we implement a host of spot solutions that addresses each type of vulnerability individually. For instance, nearly two dozen technologies are utilized to manage security within the company on devices, networks, email and data centers all of which must be managed by different solutions or vendors. What's missing in our field is a comprehensive solution that can manage these technologies so we can look at each threat from a holistic viewpoint.

Rapid Emergence of Megatrends

Every CIO continues to face the same challenges that have existed for years: How do you do more with less money? How do you make sure you're spending your IT budget that aligns with the strategy of the company?
Recently, I have noticed that where there once was one or two technology mega trends companies had to face and overcome (prepare for the internet, the Y2K crisis, the transition from mainframe to client server, to name a few) there are now five to six mega trends that companies have to quickly prepare for, whether its mobile tools, BYOD, security threats, or big data. There's been a lot of innovation in the last 10 years that's happening at the pace it would have taken 25 years to accomplish previously, so these mega trends are emerging at a more rapid rate.

Blending Innovation at every level

We encourage innovation in every single function of the company, from the executive level to the starting level of employee. We ask our IT team members to be abreast with engineers to understand their innovation framework and learn how they collect and analyze data and solve the engineering problems. The IT team is then able to work with them to automate data collection for analysis so they can focus on analyzing the data rather than mining for it. Similarly, our automation engineers work with technicians in our manufacturing facilities to determine where the most time is invested in machines and provide automation solutions to simplify the process and reduce time spent on each step to increase throughput and yield considerably. (As told to Arun Kant)