Chief

information officers (CIOs) will need to become chief integration officers, as technology transforms existing business models and gives rise to new ones, according to Deloitte’s tech trends report.

The report, which outlines the top technology forces with the potential to reshape business models and re-imagine customer engagement, found that the role of CIO is evolving rapidly, with integration at the core of its mission.

Harry Goddard, technology partner at Deloitte, said this integration role is critical from an Irish CIO's perspective as the most recent Deloitte Ireland CIO survey found that while Irish officers are willing to make investments in technologies, two-thirds ring-fence less than a tenth of their budget for innovation.

Critical domains

He said officers should view their responsibilities through an enterprise-wide lens, helping ensure critical domains such as digital, analytics and cloud aren’t spurring redundant, conflicting, or compromised investments within departmental or functional silos.

“CIOs here feel constrained by risk aversion among their executive peers, but they need to be careful that they do not find themselves relegated to an operational role,” he said.

“In this shifting landscape of opportunities and challenges, CIOs can be not only the connective tissue, but the driving force for intersecting, IT-heavy initiatives,” he added.

The report identified the scarcity of technical talent as a significant concern across many industries, with some organisations facing talent gaps along multiple fronts.

There are also unprecedented needs for new and different skill sets, including creative design, user-experience engineering, and other disciplines grounded in the arts.

Tackle challenges

To tackle these challenges, Mr Goddard said companies will have to nurture a new kind of employee, one who possesses habits, incentives and skills that differ from those in play today.

Other trends identified in the report include amplified intelligence (use of artificial intelligence to amplify workers’ abilities), ambient computing (the backdrop of sensors, devices, intelligence, and agents that can put the Internet of Things to work) and software-defined everything (the entire infrastructure and operating environment being virtualised and automated).