CIOs play a central role in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. From managing recent crisis responses to planning ahead for the next budget cycle, every CIO is balancing short-term and long-term business priorities during a time of great change.
Many businesses today are trying to augment and improve their customer, partner, and employee experiences by leveraging artificial intelligence and bots, yet grapple with the issue of cybersecurity. We’ve all heard of the numerous accounts of cybercriminals taking advantage of chat APIs, social network application vulnerabilities, and increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns. However, the majority of cybersecurity hacks are still accomplished in a rather old-fashioned manner — through the use of stolen credentials.
Consumer technology moves fast. What’s shiny and new one day can quickly become a relic of the past when the next innovation or iteration comes along. Unfortunately, enterprises don’t have the luxury of simply plugging and unplugging technology into their digital ecosystem the way we as consumers unplugged our Sony Walkmans in favor of iPods and iPhones. This is especially true as we look to artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to produce game-changing business outcomes based on data stored in legacy systems—if enterprises can figure out how to make it work.
Companies need to take the AI brain “out of the jar”; using application networks that enable AI to plug in and out of any data source or capability.
The cloud market is on the rise, with organizations drawn to the promise of increased agility, reduced costs and improved operational efficiency. According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 21.4 percent, from $153.5 billion in 2017 to $186.4 billion in 2018. Yet, while most organizations are using multiple clouds or deploying hybrid cloud environments, it is rarely part of a thought-out strategy. More often than not, various parts of the business adopt different cloud solutions ad hoc,
Imagine having the ability to detect cancerous tissue within 10 seconds via a pen-shaped device, or the ability to receive an organ donation on-demand via a 3D printer. These scenarios are becoming a reality, as the frontend of healthcare technology brims with possibility.
To survive today, companies need tech-savvy leaders. The convergence of cloud, SaaS, mobile, big data and more is turning every company into a technology company. As a result, CIOs need to step up and partner closely with business leaders to drive strategic initiatives and growth opportunities. In some cases, CIOs are even stepping up into the CEO role itself.
A daily problem CIOs face is how to deal with legacy systems—systems built decades ago in what now feels like prehistoric times. Buried deep down in the depths of organizations live these scary, monolithic fossils—Mainframe-otops, ERP Rex, COBOL-odons and more—created in a much different world than the one we live in today. The challenge has now hit the radar of CEOs, as company leaders realize that they cannot innovate fast enough thanks to the cost and complexity of legacy systems.
In part one of this Q&A series, I sat down with Jeff Rauch, vice president of IT at ICW Group, a leading national insurance carrier with over 300,000 customers and 700 employees. Jeff shared his thoughts on the changing role of IT, how he is thinking about insurtech disruptors and the future of the insurance industry as a whole. (Disclosure: ICW Group is a customer of my employer, MuleSoft.)
When people and companies grow wildly successful, we often forget that they have the same number of hours in the day as everyone else. Yet, we often find ourselves speculating, how do they do what they do…and how do they do it so well?
