The SaaS'y CIO

As many of you recall, the 90's transformed CFO's from a "controller" centric functional leader to a more "business" focused strategic leader. One of the primary drivers for this transformation can be traced back to Darwin who said that each one of us had to evolve to survive.

This decade will be the time for the CIO's transformation. As a member of the CIO-Collective (http://www.cio-collective.com/who.html), I have spoken to several CIO's who are actively discussing this change. CIO's are changing the way they look at their teams and the strengths of their organizations. One would need to analyze the resources (people and capital) that are assigned to keep the applications running versus resources that are partnering with their business partners to solve their problems. As someone responsible for our SaaS products at Business Objects OnDemand, I continually focus on the value we deliver to our customers. Our #1 priority is to not just provide an OnDemand tool to our Enterprise Subscription customers, but to focus on solutions in specific business domains. By partnering with our customers in solving their business problems, our SaaS solutions bring the collective best practices to every customer. Every SaaS solution creates a virtual social-network of users that drive consumption of innovation in new and different ways.

The time is right for CIO's to evaluate SaaS solutions in the context of the Business Value to their business. For us, Security, Data Privacy, Scalability, Disaster Recovery and tight integration with Identity / Policy Management infrastructures are just core to our overall architecture. Yes, it is critical that every CIO should evaluate SaaS Solution providers against these features ... The SaaS'y CIO would look for the Business Impact their organization can deliver to their business. I would love your thoughts on this topic. Yes, IT Does Matter !! (http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/doesitmatter.html)