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:

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.