CIO’s sound the business intelligence bell
IBM recently interviewed over 2,500 CIO’s to learn how their roles are evolving, and what they view as important. It’s an interesting report and an easy read.
So here’s one of the stunning results: 83% of those surveyed stated that business intelligence was their top priority.
83%! Seriously…have 83% of people ever agreed on anything? This is either a great sign or a sign of Groupthink Gone Wild ™.
I’ll side with the former and say that these C-level folks do have a clue about what is important.
Second on their list was virtualization at 76%. Virtualization came in second? Is anyone else surprised by this? Virtualization is primairily about cutting costs. Business Intelligence is about decision making. This is a big deal for CIO’s. Now, CIO’s are thinking strategically instead of thinking just in very simple terms of how to cut costs. (which was one of the major points made by IBM in the report)
Now the reality is that business intelligence, when properly utilized, will lead the CIO’s, and their minions, to make better decisions. And that will likely save them more $$$ than any virtualization exercise.
Nonetheless, it’s a little stunning to see the C-level thinking a little more on the abstract level…especially given the economic circumstances.
My day has been made.
BI is important but so many leaders look at their data backwards, or from just one direction which is usually “i have a huge mass of data what can i dig out of it” rather than “I need to know X,Y,Z, can the data that I have and will collect tell me these things?” I think the real question is both and a few more. But it should raise the really important question around the methodology of what are you collection, in what form, is it really reliable and why am I collectiong each datapoint. It can easily overwhelm someone. Then it’s “it’s going to cost a fortune to get it out of there, ERP datamining is a multi-year consultant / software commitment and I have no guarantee I can DO anything with it once I have “IT”. So they often give up.
On Virtualization, cost reduction is how finance groups get their heads around it but it’s also ease of management, increasing uptime, better asset utilization, reduction in IT setup time, standardization of build standards, reclamation of space, simplification of infrastructure. Oh, you think that all sounds like lower cost? It is, but there is a big driver to be able to offer a broad suite of services that’s manageable as well. Dozens of “utility” servers becomes a quagmire for IT groups stretched thin, things get lost in the shuffle, things go down. It’s cost savings but I like to characterize it more along the lines of Bang For The Buck rather than cheap IT.