| |MAY 201819The Changing Face of Enterprise TechnologyBy Bill Kohler, CIO Americas, International SOSThe role of the CIO today is very much different today vs. back in Y2K. Technology has moved from a `luxury or nice to have' to `a necessary part for most business to be successful in 2017.' The CIO role has moved from back office to the front office, adding value to both the internal business operations as well as indirectly and directly supporting external clients. The CIO today who truly can make a difference must have a seat in the boardroom with the business. The CIO must be part of the business planning and overall vision and strategy of the company. Without this, you cannot partner with the business and provide value. Today, the role of the CIO has become more of a voice that can help take the company vision and drive them there via technology.The Importance of IT: Think DifferentlyThis is probably the toughest challenge any CIO faces today. If you don't have executives (CEO, CFO or CMO) or decision makers that do not see the value in IT, you have to prove it! Take small leaps and wins to show how technology can deliver value by creating revenue streams, delivering efficiencies via automation and provide solutions that solve business problems. Before you do this, you must capture benchmarking and report on the value of IT measure by statistics or some sort of accurate metrics. This will allow you to do the same when you complete and deliver the value to show how either revenue or process has improved and change the value of IT to the business. If you can deliver solutions to bring value to the business and prove it, you will quickly win over the nay-sayers and have them stalk you, chasing you down for partnership opportunities, which will change the game in many positive ways for the CIO.Technology Evolves with each Passing Day· Automation· Metric-reporting demonstrating value to the business· Digital Vision· Big Data and Data Mining· IOT (Internet of Things)· Mobility· Data Privacy & Security· Data Analytics· Virtual Workloads (Software Defined Everything)Any global network has its weak link. Many technologies today fill the gaps of those shortcomings. For example, Riverbed, a WAN Optimization product can help improve the speed of transferring data around your network globally with pedestrian circuits. It can also provide better application performance on selected applications. This could also potentially lower you overall TOC (Total Cost of Ownership). There are many other solutions and tactical efforts you can apply to enhance Enterprise Networking overcome its challenges today. Bill KohlerCIO INSIGHTS Bill has a diverse industry background with over 20 years of experience in Technology within several verticals including; Health Services, Advertising, Marketing, Consulting Practices, Media, Publishing, Entertainment, Education, Finance, Legal and Banking. Over his career Bill has contributed his strong leadership ability to companies such as; Lehman Brothers, Golden Books Family Entertainment, BBDO, Cablevision, Dentsu Aegis Network and now at International SOS, the world's leading medical & travel security assistance company.
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