John Brand of Forrester writes on the inevitable shift of CIOs and IT. I strongly agree with the following two points. We are in a systems-of-systems world. Organizations fighting this shift are swimming against the digital tide.

“There is no “big suite” solution. Over the past 30+ years, IT has thrived on the ideals of consolidation and centralisation. One system. One repository. One place to put stuff. If only I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase “we need a single repository”. For years Ive been saying that users dont care about where something lives. They care about how to access it. Its not about a single repository. Its about a seamless repository. Google doesnt hold the worlds information sources. Its merely appears to users like it does. Forget the big suites. The one system. The strategic vendor. Focus on the right tool for the right job. Focus on the fact that the job will change — and so should the tools. The building industry hasnt rested on its laurels because it thinks its found the one perfect set of materials, construction methods and tools to do every job. Why do we think in IT that theres only one vendor, one platform or one language that we need to deal with? Embrace diversity, but still maintain a focus on management. Continuous design will be a capability that every organization will need to learn. Its not about doing it “right” the first time. Its about continually doing it better and better.   

Systems are no longer isolated — and neither are we. Over the last decade and a half, the world has connected — and interconnected — an amazing array of technologies. We are now all completely dependent on each other. And so are our systems. Our newer systems are not built on batch uploaded data sets that we can control and cleanse — but on masses of big data that we need to extract meaning and structure from. We cant have the luxury of first defining a structure and populating data into it. We must work with what we have or what we can get. Fast.”

via The Empowered BT Era Will Force Yes, Force A New Role For CIOs – And Drag IT Out Of The Backrooms | Forrester Blogs.

I’m attending Forrester’s co-located CIO and EA Forums next week in Vegas. Will blog and tweet what I hear. Look me up if you are there.

The WSJ has a new CIO Journal. The first few days were predictable, but this guest article by Irving WB has me looking forward to true CIO level content.

Try plotting your CIO and/or IT org in the 2 x 2 matrix that Wladawsky-Berger describes: Internal & Operational, Internal & Strategic, External & Operational, External & Strategic.

“To discuss something as complex as the evolving role of the CIO, I would like to offer a simple and hopefully comprehensive framework based primarily on my own experience working with CIOs over the past several decades, as well as on various excellent studies on the future of the CIO.

Two major dimensions stand out along which to develop such a framework. One dimension focuses on whether the activities are more operational versus strategic, that is, oriented more toward the near term or the longer term. The second dimension focuses on whether the activities are more internal versus external, that is, primarily aimed at supporting the business functions or at growing the business in the marketplace.

While each of these dimensions is more of a continuous spectrum than just two discrete roles, it is helpful to discuss each of the four roles resulting from such a 2 x 2 framework.”

keep reading: A Framework for Evaluating the Modern CIO – The CIO Report – WSJ.