Emergence of the new CIO
Few weeks back, business card of one of my clients caught my attention – the designation read as Chief Integration Officer ("CIO")! This goes on to demonstrate that integration platforms of enterprises have started seeing the need for dedicated attention from a CXO designate. Incidentally, two weeks later, during my panel discussion at "Connection 2009", similar view points were echoed by my fellow panel members - Ken Vollmer (of Forrester), Mark Zrna (of Orica) and Lowell Gilvin (of Jabil Circuit). The panel, moderated by Chris Johnson from Sterling Commerce, agreed that integration platform has taken a role of paramount importance in companies and has is no longer seen as just another ‘infrastructure’ element; this sentiment reflects analysts’ opinion that integration has catapulted into top-5 priorities of CIOs. This has led to evolution of a special role of “Chief Integration Officer” who is now responsible and accountable for the integration strategy in the enterprise.
In last decade, multiple concepts like business process management (BPM), cloud computing, business intelligence, service oriented architecture, etc have flourished under the aegis of integration space. It is important that companies invest in creating “Integration Competency Centers” (or ICC) to realize maximum value out of their integration investments. ICC should be entrusted to create the integration strategy aligned with the company’s IT strategy which in turn should align with business priorities. Emergence of roles like CIO ensures that the governance of such ICCs gets dedicated CXO level sponsorship within the enterprise. We have seen our clients believe that it makes best sense to have all the BPM, BI, Cloud Computing, and SOA initiatives with the integration teams.
Another interesting point that emerged during the panel discussion was the acceptance of federated integration infrastructure by the clients. While it was earlier believed that clients will migrate completely to ERP-package based integration suites (like Oracle Fusion or SAP PI) over a period of time, it has been found that clients today are maybe not comfortable with ‘all eggs in one basket’ approach and instead are opting for federated integration architecture; this approach has led to need and thereby creation of inter-operable ESBs. ICCs under the CIOs provide the right combination of governance and architecture set up to ensure the success of best of breed approach. I believe that Sterling’s Business Integration Suite (BIS) could be seen as one of the pure-play ESB options by clients in their federated integration infrastructure.
The launch of Sterling’s Business Integration Suite (BIS) was one of the highlights of Connection 2009. With this product launch, Sterling tries to spread its reach beyond B2B (one of the leaders) into core EAI. If Sterling has to succeed in a federated environment, CIOs can be reached out as one of the early adopters of their BIS offerings. Having provided consulting and implementation services to customers on the Sterling’s GIS and Gentran products for many years now, we will be interested to see how Sterling evolves as an EAI vendor in an organic fashion. "Connection 2010" will show the extent to which Sterling BIS has been able to stamp its presence in the EAI space, and I look forward to it!
So, next time you see CIO as a designation on a business card, have a careful look again, it might be the Chief Integration Officer you are in company with!
