Gartner aims to ease CIO role

Next week's Gartner ITxpo event will look at the difficulties facing chief information officers

Chief information officers (CIOs) are feeling the pressure of keeping senior executives happy with short-term results while implementing major IT changes, according to analyst Gartner.

Over the next year CIOs will have a difficult juggling act to manage, says Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner Fellow, who will be delivering a speech at the annual European Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Cannes next week.

‘A lot of CIOs have quite a few major initiatives under way to refresh critical IT infrastructure,’ he says.

‘But the problem is that most parts of the business do not understand this and it doesn’t help immediately in terms of meeting sales targets.’

Gartner surveyed a large proportion of the 4,000 European CIOs and senior IT managers registered to attend the conference, which takes place between 7 and
11 November. The firm found that ‘delivering results’ ranked as a top-three priority for most IT departments.

With more than 100 analysts in attendance, 150 sessions and 29 different themes – ranging from IT management and security through to the future of technology – Gartner will outline the key issues that IT departments need to tackle.

Visitors attending the Gartner Symposium at the Palais des Congrès, will also hear how the role of the CIO will change over the next five years, says Kyte.

‘The skills profile and measurement that were effective for CIOs five years ago are no longer effective today,’ he says.

‘But very few CIOs have seriously taken on board the need to re-profile their management team to meet the challenges of the future; people need both technical and relationship management skills.’

In his Current State and Future Direction of IT speech, scheduled for Tuesday 8 November, Kyte will outline how IT departments need to eliminate unnecessary IT projects and consolidate systems.

‘A lot of CIOs have too many projects on the go,’ says Kyte.

‘It’s like trying to put in a new fitted kitchen, re-tile the bathroom and landscape the garden all over one weekend.’

‘Companies taking this approach are not going to make progress; it will feel like nothing is happening and other parts of the business will get frustrated.’

The recent spate of mergers and acquisitions has led to many companies inheriting multiple systems and processes.

‘It’s hard to consolidate and simplify systems and processes but the rewards could be significant,’ he says.

Gartner will also describe how technology-literate employees could demand a consumerisation of IT in the organisation, expecting the same usability that their home-based systems provide.

Employees will demand access to systems from ‘any device, any time, anywhere’ and will also want to personalise the look and feel of the IT interface to fit in with how they work, says Kyte.

In its Information Security: Solved! sessions, analysts Tom Scholtz, Jay Heiser and Ant Allan will explain how companies need to tackle this change through new identity management and secure remote working practices.

‘These changes require a fundamental shift in the field of security. The old-fashioned model involved building bigger and thicker walls to keep people out,’ says Kyte. ‘But now it’s more about letting people in, but restricting what they can and cannot access.’

The conference will also see Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, make a keynote speech.