By Eleanor Reader
IDC is predicting that a shift in the global IT environment will create a new breed of Australian and New Zealand CIOs.
This ‘shift’ has been prompted by IT customer’s growing expectation for bigger, better and faster results.
With the growing number of choices available, customers aren’t hesitating to switch service providers in search of better customer service, forcing CIOs to adapt quickly or risk losing business.
According to IDC’s latest ANZ CIO Survey from April 2012, the majority of CIOs remain positive about their business prospects for the next six months, with 2012 budgets even increasing from 2010, however this has only raised the expectation of “more for less”.
This has seen the number of CIOs expecting IT projects to show a positive ROI within 12 months to increase from 36 per cent in 2010 to 43 per cent in 2012.
IDC claims a surge of interest in new delivery models due to “unpredictable global economies and volatile demand for services” has forced CIOs to source business and IT services from multiple external suppliers to fulfil these changing business requirements, while still conserving capital.
“The CIO becomes a service broker and manager rather than a technologist; sourcing, integrating, then managing the services on behalf of their business units,” IDC said.
Compensating for this shift may prove to be a major challenge for many IT organisations, which aren’t equipped with the proper IT service management (ITSM) to handle the change.
“The result for the CIO will be a reliance on external brokers and integrators, and on external managers for their applications,” said IDC.
“For the IT organisation, their internal structure and capability profile shifts to address service management and financial management rather than technology management, beginning the rebirth of the IT function to an organisation-wide business support function.”
