Back to the Future: The Future Role of the CIO

by Robert N. Charette

Welcome to the Cutter "Future of the CIO" pool! At one end of the pool, we hear all the paranoid negatives. IT is not strategic, so CIOs will be reduced to technology caretakers and vendor managers, as they should be. CIOs are strategically dim-witted and not as sharp as the business in matters of IT and business value, so good riddance to the role. IT is now a consumer product that business leaders will buy themselves, bypassing a central IT purchasing and EA regime that seemed to exist only to stymie the strategy artisans in the business units. Web and Enterprise 2.0 have freed the business from the clutches of central IT and enabled so many benefits that we can stop thinking about corporate IT in the old way.