Do Not Call Me Chief Information Officer, But Chief Integration Officer. A Summary of the 2011 Detroit CIO Roundtable

摘要

In 2011 a roundtable meeting of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) that was organized by the Manufacturing Information systems Center at the School of Business Administration at Wayne State University discussed the emergence of public cloud computing and how this is changing the role of the CIO for medium- and large-sized organizations. The nine CIOs represented a range of manufacturing and service industries in the Greater Detroit area. This article summarizes the key themes of that roundtable, namely, the continuing change in role of the CIO as public cloud computing becomes mainstream. Key among those changes is not as much technological, because private clouds have been around now for quite some time, but rather in the broader and more challenging scope of responsibilities the CIOs now have. The role of the CIO is evolving from providing and supporting information technology and systems toward one largely based on managing the integration of externally acquired standardized hardware, software, and services while retaining quality control and remaining within budget, as well as the need to be more acquainted with the legal side of contracting. This changing set of CIO responsibilities has not made the technical skills any less important, but it has added a host of additional skills that the CIOs and those serving under them now need to master.