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summits
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11-13 April 2010
Red Rock Casino • Resort • Spa, Las Vegas, NV, USA |
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Interview
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Information Technology has evolved into one of the most valuable assets of a company. CIOs are entrusted to make strategic decisions that can lead the business to success or failure. However, they often need to judge on little tested technologies, as they cannot afford to miss the chance of having a strategic advantage over competitors by implementing too late. Jeffrey Johnson, VP and Deputy CIO at Constellation Energy, a speaker at the marcus evans CIO Summit Spring 2010 taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 11 - 13, shares his thoughts on cloud computing, IT strategies on cutting costs and increasing efficiency, and his long-term goals. How do you expect the CIO’s role to evolve in the next few years? Jeffrey Johnson: The CIO has evolved from a back office administrative function, managing the computers and the computer room, to a more strategic business function where IT is used for competitive advantage. As we evolve into the future, on some level, IT will become the business and the business will have to become more savvy with IT. The CIO’s role will demand a closer relationship with the other executives, to help them understand the capabilities of technology as a business strategy enabler. It is increasingly more important that CIOs are business people first. They obviously need to have a background in technology but they also need to help their leadership peers and the CEO, who may or may not be as tech savvy, to understand the business capability of technology. The best IT leaders are those who work closely with the business, or have even done a tour of duty within. In cutting edge organizations we are starting to see business leaders coming up through other departments doing a tour of duty through IT. Every strategic business decision inevitably involves information technology. What challenges are CIOs in the US facing at the moment? Jeffrey Johnson: One of the most prominent challenges is how to work with the business to reposition its growth, while establishing a technology foundation that will not scale costs in a linear fashion as the business begins to grow again. It is really about improving the productivity of the IT service delivery process. Freeing up capital that you can spend on new strategic capabilities, rather than just keeping the lights on and running the operations. You really want to shift that percentage; if you are spending 70 or 80 per cent of your IT budget on ongoing operations, and the remaining on driving new capabilities and innovations, you are going to be in trouble. IT needs to spend some of the money on itself. What other initiatives to improve IT productivity and efficiency will you be undertaking in the near future? Jeffrey Johnson: There are three things we are planning to do within the IT realm to improve business as well as IT productivity. Firstly, we want to build the next generation collaboration suite and an integrated approach to leveraging technology. We are looking at how we can develop a ruthless standard from an architectural perspective, to drive end-to-end knowledge management, content development and information sharing capabilities across the enterprise and across the life cycle of that information. The second thread is to continue to invest in and lever up our IT service management processing platform to a platform used for any common service that is shared across our various businesses. And the third thread, is to extend our virtualization capabilities and create a virtual stack of technologies that can be provisioned within hours and de-provisioned when no longer needed; essentially, an IT platform with infrastructure services on demand, an internal cloud that we can manage. What are your thoughts on cloud computing initiatives? Jeffrey Johnson: Cloud technology is at the peak of the hype cycle right now. What we believe is that if you define a cloud as providing highly virtualized IT services on demand in a seamless way, then our strategy is to build and manage an internal cloud. That is what we will be working towards over the next few years, while external cloud providers mature; we have our eyes on them, but we believe we need to understand how to build the menus internally before we look at potentially purchasing some of those services from the external providers. There are risks associated with internal clouds, as it is a newer approach from a technology perspective. As with other projects, you need a good plan to deal with the risks, you need to make sure you have architected it well, that it has been well tested and that it is going to meet your customers’ needs. But the bigger issue is how to bring the organization along, as it is a shift from the organizational change management perspective in how IT services are requested and paid for. I think the governance you need around the softer side of the change is sometimes the hardest part to manage. It is difficult to move into something that is perceived as new. It should be a priority to work with business partners and define how to bring the new projects onto the old stack of technology in the most seamless way. In your opinion, what IT strategy or initiative would transform the ICT landscape? Jeffrey Johnson: I really do believe that IT organizations will need to invest in delivering IT services. But, an integrated service delivery platform strategy is going to be absolutely required. In the last 20 years, IT organizations have been helping the business implement common processes on a common platform, yet when you look at many IT organizations, their own processes, tools and data are fractured. The kind of solution that IT will be asked to deliver in the future is going to be so much more complex and challenging, that IT organizations are going to need to invest in themselves and build a common IT service management framework. As a CIO, what are your long-term goals? Jeffrey Johnson: Our long-term goals are to better align IT investments to the strategic business goals, to deliver those initiatives with precision, predictability and quality, and to manage the delivery of IT services through a standard process and framework. This will allow us to manage IT service delivery with high quality and declining unit cost with great metrics, such that we truly are managing IT service delivery as a business.
Sarin Kouyoumdjian-Gurunlian
This unique forum will take place at the Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 11-13, 2010. Offering much more than any conference, exhibition or trade show, this exclusive meeting will bring together esteemed industry thought leaders and solution providers to a highly focused and interactive networking event. The summit includes presentations on harnessing the power of infrastructure as a service, practical applications of cloud computing and safeguarding company data. For more information please send an email to info@marcusevanscy.com or visit the event website Please note that the summit is a closed business event and the number of participants strictly limited.
marcus evans Summits are high level business forums for the world’s leading decision-makers to meet, learn and discuss strategies and solutions. Held at exclusive locations around the world, these events provide attendees with a unique opportunity to individually tailor their schedules of keynote presentations, think tanks, seminars and one-on-one business meetings. For more information, please visit www.marcusevans.com All rights reserved. The above content may be republished or reproduced – kindly inform us by sending an email to press@marcusevanscy.com.
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