An exciting but risky time to be a CIO

Servaas Venter

"Yesterday's CIO agenda was about building applications for the ageing client/server model," Venter pointed out. "Today, almost every new application is being written for mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. Customers' expectations have increased. Where completing forms in ink and dealing with call centres was the norm only a few years ago, being able to interact on a website just doesn't cut it today. The modern consumer expects interaction to be app-based, for example submitting photos and video for an insurance claim has to be done straight from a mobile phone.

"The explosion of data continues unabated and it's created a tipping point where enterprise-ready has needed to make way for consumer-ready. From making resilient agile systems that would address the needs of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of users, a modern mobile application has to conquer the demands of millions. This alone is simply game changing.

CIOs need a strategy

In this new paradigm, Venter believes that CIOs need a strategy to enable their apps for mobile devices. He explained that EMC is building a mobile environment that is safe, secure and available for its 60,000 employees globally, especially its road warriors in the field. The company is even looking at ways to reduce travel expenses related to internal meetings, freeing up resources that can be invested in a more mobile-enabled workforce.

CIOs also need to consider whether they have the software development skills for agile application development and rapid deployment.

"Many enterprises gave up those talents for leaner organisations years ago and have lost that core DNA. But some, especially in financial services, kept those skills in-house for customised work. That extra cost used to be seen as a liability, but now bespoke applications are coming back into favour. Pivotal Labs, for example, has attracted the ninjas of agile app development world who are helping organisations relearn those lost skills," Venter said.

Data lakes

And while yesterday's CIO agenda was about building data warehouses, this feels static and limited today. Now, leading-edge enterprises are building data lakes that can pool a lot more information about the business, in various data formats, that can be analysed in real time, usually based on Hadoop or HDFS technology.

"Data lakes yield better predictive insights than the rear-view mirror perspective of a data warehouse," he said. "At EMC, we're using our own big data tools to analyse failure rates in real time, to predict and address potential problems before they occur. Predictive analytics is one area of IT today that really interests a CIO's ultimate boss, the CEO."

Although most enterprises still need to run client/server platform applications, this needs to be done in a way that enables consumption-based ITaaS in the cloud/mobile world. According to Venter, the term 'cloud' can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people, so planning for cloud-enabled IT raises fundamental questions to answer: Which of these applications will live in your data centre's private cloud? Which ones will live in a public cloud, off-premises?

"Building a hybrid cloud at enterprise scale is an IT organisation's next project. But few organisations can afford to wait two years for implementation. That's why we've just introduced our Enterprise Hybrid Cloud solution that can help customers get their hybrid cloud up and running in 28 days or less," he said.

Advanced security techniques

Finally, yesterday's approach to IT security was all about perimeter defence, putting heavy locks on doors to keep the bad guys out. In a cloud/mobile world, the perimeter is more porous, so the bad guys are sneaking in undetected; however, the forward-looking CIOs and CISOs are deploying advanced security techniques: security analytics that monitor network traffic for anomalies in the flow of information, enabling an enterprise to catch bad guys in the act.

"For CIOs who lead large organisations and have to manage the expectations of a business and its executive team, the change management challenge may be the greatest challenge of them all. There is no question that today's IT platform is changing dramatically. The question for CIOs is, are you?" Venter concluded.