How platforms in disguise are changing the role of a CIO

Vincent Vanderbeck
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

That IT organisations are changing isn’t new and the Bimodal IT concept from Gartner isn’t new either. And guess what, Innovation is at the heart of this change. New technologies are changing at such a rapid pace that the classic approach of defining global architectures, long-term roadmaps and multi-million projects are not relevant anymore. The Bimodal IT concept was already trying to solve the problem of combining the day-to-day IT operations with the job of supporting business transformation.

But all these changes in it organisations were induced by a wave of digital transformations. Technology was eating the world and therefore many organisations needed to place technology at the heart of their organisations and even rethink their business in some cases. And now there’s a second wave of transformation coming that will transform the role of a CIO even more. This second wave is driven by what I call “platforms in disguise”.

Platforms in disguise

IT architecture used to be simple and straightforward. It was built on top of standards with building blocks mostly with three letter words like CRM, ERP, WMS, DMS, CMS and the likes. But that is changing. New and emerging technologies are changing the classic approach to it architecture. It all started with mobile technologies. 5 years ago every CMO wanted to be present in the AppStore and ordered an app to some local mobile agency and IT was not really involved. Soon, people discovered other applications for these mobile devices than the simple corporate app. That’s one example of a platform in disguise. It enters into an organisation disguised as a marketing stunt and suddenly reveals other possibilities like remote maintenance or sales tool. And the world is full of platforms these days. Blockchain started as an underlying mechanism for bitcoin transactions and was introduced in the banking area as a building block for a state-of-the-art architecture. But it reveals a new face with totally different applications in a much broader area than it was originally intended. And we could one, with VR, AI and many others._

And all these new evolutions are definitely changing the role of the CIO. Instead of running a division who’s at the service of marketing, HR or other departments, the CIO is in a leading role of driving innovation within a company. Who else is tech savvy enough to understand what machine learning or blockchain could mean for a company. Therefore the CIO should take a lead in introducing new technological opportunities within a broad range of departments. Just as the agile way of working has driven it organisations the past couple of years, is also being adopted through entire organisations.

Comma Group

Comma Group is a collaborative network of agile, technology-focused development companies helping organizations to transform into a digital enterprise. Each company thereby focuses on its own strengths and technologies.

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