SaaS and Cloud Forging a New Role for CIOs

As more work moves outside of IT, the role of IT will be more generalist and business involved; more architect than construction worker.

The control point will be a front office that clearly explains what IT offers, how to contract it, the costs, and provides visibility into delivery from multiple sources.  It will have to be agnostic and customer centric. The traditional role of controlling and withholding IP, resources, permissions will simply shift demand for the cloud.

The article is here.

A recent blog post by former CIO George Tomko has a title that neatly encapsulates this change: CIOs as Brokers, not Controllers. "... a CIO is a broker of business solutions that involve cross functional process stewardship and a provider of a technology and infrastructure framework," he writes. "... Any attempt to be controlling, withholding, short-sighted or locked-in will simply generate powerful incentives for the organization to go it alone, underground, in any number of ways. CIOs that fail to migrate from IT czar style CIO to chief impact officer style CIO will find themselves moved out, passed over or [demoted]."

SaaS and Cloud Forging a New Role for CIOs - The Connected Web.

And this also means a change for the business too. They'll have to be much more responsible for what they consume.  They certainly will be paying for it.