CIOs in Transition: The Silver Linings Playbook for MSPs
CEO perceptions of IT organizations and the internal CIO role are changing, according to new research, and the changes may bode well for external IT service provider business opportunities. The research was conducted over the course of two years by The Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Intel and TNS Global, and Jim Stikeleather has blogged many of the findings over at the HBR’s website.
But here’s a quick summary of some of the findings the research revealed about CEO perceptions about CIOs and IT departments:
- Almost half of CEOs believe IT should be a commodity service that is purchased as needed
- Almost half of CEOs rate their CIOs negatively in terms of understanding the business and understanding how to apply IT in new ways to the business
- 57 percent of the executives expect their IT function to change significantly over the next three years, and 12 percent predict a "complete overhaul" of IT
- Only a quarter of CEOs believe their CIO was performing above his or her peers
HBR offers many ideas about why this is happening, but the fact that it IS happening points to growing opportunities for IT service provider companies. (Purely anecdotal, but, a handful of companies in the last week have told me that they are seeing more IT service providers driven to providing cloud-based services because their customers want to migrate IT to the cloud.
What can MSPs target from the quick summary above? The first one I’d pull out is the “understanding the business and understanding how to apply IT in new ways to the business.” These are just the kinds of high level conversations that MSP coaches and PSA vendors urge service providers to have with their customers. Here is just more proof point about how that can be a differentiator for your company.
“a handful of companies in
“a handful of companies in the last week have told me that they are seeing more IT service providers driven to providing cloud-based services because their customers want to migrate IT to the cloud.” That’s great to hear! If you don’t know Intronis already, we invite you to begin your Partner Trial today! (http://campaign.intronis.com/dnl-cloud-backup-trial.html) Our cloud backup and recovery service is designed for IT service providers.
As a former CIO (2x) and more
As a former CIO (2x) and more recently a management consultant, I concur. I’ve heard CxO’s making statements to this effect for at least the last 2 years. What continues to puzzle me is the same executives continue to resist inviting anyone with a technology background into the inner circle or even to planning sessions or retreats. How is they expect to drive technology deeper into the business (turning the corner from reactive to proactive) while keeping it at arms length?
Thanks for the perspectives
Thanks for the perspectives on this. If CIOs aren’t listening to their technology advisers, I wonder who they ARE listening to.