Tech expertise - Is it a must for all CIOs?

By SiliconIndia | Wednesday, February 1, 2012

CIOs act as a bridge between the business and the Technology. But is it necessary for CIOs to be a tech expert. The answer is - No. When it comes to CIOs, tech expertise is not essential, as per an article by Mary Jander in internetevolution.com

A CIO survey by IBM brings out that a CIO does not need to be from a technical background. But, yes, every CIO has to deliver on IT backgrounds right from secure and reliable delivery of information technology to satisfying the demand of end users.

A study by IBM which interviewed more than 3000 CIOs globally, 83% of the CIOs had plans for business intelligence and analytics, whereas 74% had plans for mobility solutions and 68% want to go for virtualization.

The question at this point of time is, is it necessary for all the CIOs to have deep knowledge about all these technologies?

The answer is - not every CIO needs to be highly technically sound. It is not necessary for all the CIOs to know everything about these technologies, but he/she must keep themselves updated with these technologies. It is not required for them to have deep knowledge about these technologies, but they should know how adopting these technologies can affect their organization. Today, CIOs are more concerned regarding how to excel at business and building relationship. Building a relationship means acting as a bridge between the business and technology, data and wisdom, Organization and Ecosystem, and lastly between today and future. Moreover a CIO must also have a will for knowing what he/she does not know be it analytics, virtualization, mobility, e-commerce or otherwise.