The evolving role of a CIO requires a perspective beyond technology alone. A modern CIO’s role centers on how to better enable decision-making, with the skillful use of technology, information, and knowledge. They need to know the line between what needs to be standardized and planned, and what needs to be flexible and agile. More than that, to become an agile leader they need to understand how to focus their personal brand as being collaborative and inclusive.I had a conversation with Mr.Bask Iyer,SVP & CIO of VMware, who brought another interesting quality to the role. As a former enterprise customer, he had the full experience from a customer’s point of view, to add on top of the company’s internal use of VMware’s own technology.This advantage brings another level of insight into corporate strategy to the executive table.
Mr.Iyer joined VMware in March 2015 to lead their global information and technology organization.Prior to this, he was SVP & CIO at Juniper Networks,served as chief information officer at Honeywell,and chief information officer at GlaxoSmithKline Beecham for consumer healthcare research and development, over 25 years of experience in driving change in traditional Fortune 100 manufacturing companies and high technology firms.
Rawn Shah:Does the way how different generations use or look at technology affect how a CIO supports the workforce?
Bask Iyer:I think isn’t new and has always been the case.In the IT profession,it has always been a mix of new people and very experienced. Mainframes were challenged by the Mid-range, and Mid-range by the PCs.The younger generation today seems to have a preference for mobile devices.Having said that,older guys also use new technology.
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What is different is the rate of change itself is getting faster.Say you have Slack become the new standard and IT declares that.Almost as soon as you declare that,people will start looking for the next thing.In VMware we have a few different collaboration tool standards,but you can’t be worried about which two to focus on because it will be different in six months.
Some backbone technology, we have to support always.Phones have to work.Email has to work.People expect to find other people and schedule meetings.Beyond that,be very practical about what can be used the backbone and perhaps a few more.With the environment of changing tools,the best approach is to educate people on what the crown jewels and where the pitfalls are.IT becomes about education and policy and tools to monitor where usage is going.
Date: April 24, 2016