Funny, but true it is. The way various functions are getting converted into fancy designations and corporate roles, it appears one day there will be 100+ C-level execs in a decent size corporation.
Not very long ago, I read an old blog posted on CNN Money tilted "7 Executive Jobs in the Future C-suite." It was interesting. The list goes Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Cloud Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Perception Officer, Chief Talent Officer, Chief Social Media Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer.
Even we published a blog by Eric D. Brown very recently titled "Is It Time for Chief (Insert Buzzword) Officer?"
What prompted me to write this blog is my friend Manish Pal's comment on a blog by Peter Kretzman that we reposted from his blog site titled "IT Consumerization, the Cloud and the Alleged Death of the CIO". Pal wrote, "Yes, CIO will become CCO (Chief Cloud Officer). Same game albeit, with a new set of rules."
Quite interesting, and if I may say so, close to being most realistic among the rest, which appear largely unrealistic barring a few getting adopted in large corporations.
Chief Cloud Officer sounds interesting. It may not eat up a CIO's job entirely, simply because CIO is more of a businessman now - moving out from the facilitator's role to a strategic role. Why do we not see the CCO today? This is simply because Cloud adoption is still in its infancy. Once cloud gets into the mainstream in the corporate and there are multiple (cloud) vendors, the former might need a CCO or an official responsible for managing vendors, performance, security and ownership of SLAs of the cloud.
Kate Brew in her blog titled "Gloom, Doom and the Chief Cloud Officer" says, "It's not a completely crazy idea. The CCO could also be a business guy. He will need a team of people to help him do things like defining and implement cloud security policy, monitor network performance and security, monitor application performance, bill cloud vendors when they do not meet their SLAs, bill cloud vendors when they have security incidents, manage cloud vendor relationships, deal with security and privacy issues and incidents and so on."
I am not an astrologer who predicts the future of a CIO or a CCO but it appears that the latter is a fit case to manage the adoption of cloud and future strategy in an enterprise. The CCO would have to ensure that his enterprise leverages every aspect of this technology resulting into a fundamental shift in thinking. CCO will also ensure that the process makes good business sense.
How would a JD for a CCO read?
I am amused to create a fictitious JD for a CCO:
- Ability to create a cloud blueprint
- Ability to align/migrate existing business operations with cloud computing
- Ability to prepare a clear deployment roadmap
- Ability to comprehend security related issues and problems and comply with the corporate policy
- Ability to deal with multiple cloud vendors
- Ability to prepare sturdy and foolproof SLAs and manage vendors on them
- Ability to manage internal and external stakeholders
Having made those ridiculous remarks, I am 100 percent sure this is not (at least in the mid-term future) going to be any real. Only if Cloud replaces 60-70 percent of conventional IT that this will emerge as an option.
It will be interesting to watch if CIOs would like to take up the position of CCO. Will you?
I would say today’s CIO is ideal Chief CLOUD Officer, to not only talk about “C” word, but also enhance “C” level communication and business solutions in C-Suite. And first thing first, Cloud strategy is part of IT Strategy, and IT is part of business strategy. Always need see it through the lens of business.
Mainframe networking, client server, internet PC networking, cloud computing? What do all these have in common, they move and process INFORMATION!, so what’s the problem with CIO?
Change the name of a pencil and it’s still a pencil!!! Change the name of the VP of HR to Chief People Officer, they’re still in the same job. Titles are such a waste of discussion time, see, I just wasted two minutes.
The thought looks interesting, but as you say, the reality looks distant.
Long time ago, the company that I was in, had a dilemma. With some senior managers stagnating, they had to introduce new designations. Senior managers were elevated to General Managers and GMs became VPs. There was a joke going around saying that we will now have GM-Canteens, GM-Toilets, GM-Stationery etc. Likewise are the C-Level positions now.
Going forward, the ‘Cloud’ may be replaced by some better solutions. If we recall, we thought hosting, SaaS, PaaS were the final frontiers but came the cloud a few years later. Not sure what the future holds for us.
Though IT has helped many businesses grow multi-fold, IT and IT management is never being treated on par with Marketing and Research functions. With polarisation from services companies on the IT implementation, the IT managers whatever the designations they hold, will become sophisticated secretaries of CEOs / Dept heads and will soon be treated as additional cost to the business.
People from marketing, sales, research, finance can become CEO, but it is rare; a CIO with only IT background becoming a CEO. May be it is not true entirely, will be happy to see thoughts contrary to this.
I couldn’t agree more Jim. “Cloud” is simply a marketing buzz word that’s saturating the industry to meet sales quotas, and will soon evaporate as quickly as it accumulated. I sometimes wonder if people understand “one bit” of information…
Though you may be right about IT not treated at par, we must remember that IT is relatively a new function which has come on it’s own only a decade ago. IT heads therefore need to fight their way up and prove to be a cut above the rest. They have to be more relevant to business and be a lead in bringing about a change. Who would ignore such a functionary.