Greetings! I'm the executive editor at Computerworld, where we cover enterprise IT for managers such as corporate CIOs. I like the title of this blog, because I've always been a bit disappointed that the title Chief Information Officer has come to mean "top technology executive" instead of "top information executive." The CIO title actually evolved in the mid-1980s from the public-sector notion of "information resources management," which held that information (in whatever form) is a resource that needs to be managed. However, through the 1990s, the CIO was more T than I.

But that may be changing. Consider the following megatrends:
* Outsourcing and hosted software applications mean there's less technology in the corporate IT shop.
* CEOs want CIOs to exploit business intelligence systems for competitive advantage, innovation and business agility.
* Those business intelligence systems require careful attention to data quality, because dirty data yields bad decisions.
* CIOs are playing a role in regulatory compliance such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires better information management.
* CEOs want CIOs to help tame information overload so they can get better productivity from managers and knowledge workers.
* CIOs should be involved in records management, especially now that it's routine for companies to get hauled into court and have to produce all of their memos and e-mail.
* Privacy, security and intellectual-property protection (all information issues) are hot corporate priorities.

In most cases, those megatrends deal more with information management than with technology management. So my guess (hope?) is that the CIO job -- which today is probably 80% T and 20% I -- will see a reversal in that ratio.

Given the power of these megatrends, maybe in five years CIOs will really live up to their middle name.

Mitch Betts
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/betts

Posted by at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi. My name is Jim Firestone and I am the President of Xerox North America.

As a result of my job, I spend a lot of time speaking with customers, industry analysts, financial analysts and our own research and development teams about the future. One thing that is clear to me is that we are living in the midst of a sea change of enormous proportions in how, when, and how often, people communicate How this all plays out is not certain and we are all, (those of us in the IT or the communications industries, at least), trying to figure it out at the same time.

I thought that a blog might be a good chance to dialogue about this change, what the future holds, and hear what others are thinking. Hopefully, it will foster spirited discussion and debate around some of the key inflection points we face. Being purely selfish for a moment, this will help Xerox better understand what the world is thinking and where it is likely to go. But it should also provide a forum for everyone to learn and develop their ideas. I am clearly not the expert on this topic, but I can bring experts from Xerox and elsewhere into the discussion. Who knows what ideas and insights might flow from this.

This week I am preparing for the AIIM/On Demand show in Philadelphia so I am spending time refining my thoughts and comments. While I am there I will be speaking about this sea change.

So what is this sea change I am talking about? In many respects, it is the end of the technology revolution and the beginning of the information revolution. We are entering a period where the focus in IT is not on the "T", but on the "I". We call it Big "I", little "t". The technology infrastructure is no longer the primary focus because we are all networked, web-service enabled, ERP'd, and outsourced. Now we can get to the real challenge: making work easier. And to do that we need to focus on the information that rides on the technology railroad.

Two immediate and huge implications come to mind.

First, all communications should become personalized, customized and just in time. Every piece of communication. From books, (think Amazon or Barnes and Noble without a warehouse), to direct marketing, to customer collaterals, to education etc. Why wouldn't all of these be tailored exactly to the need at hand. The technology is there. From the creation of the communication, to the data base of insight, to the digital print, or electronic display and archival. We call this the New Business of Printing and it will revolutionize printing everywhere over time.

Second, what about all the document dependent processes that are the core of most enterprises or governmental institutions? These are all legacies of an analogue world. Most of these processes predated today's technology. But now they have been "hardwired" into the organizational structures of most institutions and are so taken for granted that often we don't even see them anymore. Well, technology exists to create self correcting and self routing documents. Digital repositories that know what versions are correct for which situations. Intelligent scanning. Paper with embedded audio or video files. The mind boggles. We call all of this "Smarter Document Management" and it will have great fundamental impact on how organizations of the future operate.

But I am getting carried away with all this. Now let's hear from others. It is real? Is it important?

With AIIM/On Demand coming on the heels of the World Congress on Information Technology gathering in Austin, Texas where industry leaders like Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Paul Otellini and Anne Mulcahy talked about the role IT plays in issues like the digital divide, security, compliance and health care, maybe there are some more compelling topics to discuss. If anyone was there, what do you think? What do those of you going to AIIM /ON Demand hope to see while you are there?

Thanks for listening. But, now, what do you think?

Posted by Big I, little t at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)