Key Priorities of Top Performing CIOs

Software-fueled shifts in the competitive landscape over the past decade coupled with global disruptions and user demands for secure, always-on digital experiences have significantly impacted CIO roles across all sectors. Now, as the speed of innovation skyrockets, complexity along application delivery grows, and attack surfaces evolve, executive-level foresight is more critical than ever. And in a world where it takes only one move-right or wrong-to make a significant impact, modern CIOs are at the helm of these weighty decisions. Put bluntly by McKinsey Digital, "There's no worse time to be an average CIO."

New Breed of CIO: From IT Leader to Growth Driver

It's a high-stakes race to develop a winning multi-cloud strategy and attract world-class talent but the chances of gaining ground in the application economy are slim and top CIOs aren't standing by. Instead, they're approaching tech-driven growth with an understanding that developer experience (DevEx) and customer experience (CX) are directly correlated and without one, you can't have the other. As such, a new breed of revenue-generating CIOs are laser-focused on building teams, tools, and processes that raise the bar.

Reaching for the Clouds

As innovation accelerates, the benefit of multi-cloud is undeniable. No other configuration enables companies to leverage the unique qualities of diverse cloud providers, minimize dependency on any single vendor, scale efficiently, and bolster organizational resilience as effectively. That said, modern CIOs understand the difficulty of monitoring multi-cloud configurations and embrace platforms that deliver not only real-time health visibility across all clouds-but also monitor and alert to security anomalies across multi-cloud environments. In addition, these tools create shared visibility for development, operations, and security teams that supports collaboration-a key component of DevEx-focused environments.

Innovation on the fly

CIOs experienced firsthand how disruptive global crises can be, and the need to be prepared has never been more critical now that the world is in the midst of multiple crises on a myriad of geopolitical and health-related fronts. Lessons learned during extraordinary lifts-and-shifts (some good, some catastrophic) stand as a measure of how important it is to build a resilient organization. In a world forever changed by the forced exodus to remote work, forward-thinking CIOs aren't focused on getting teams back to the office. They're doubling down on secure, productivity-boosting, and portable IT environments that seamlessly support anywhere work while partnering with recruitment peers to leverage that aspect to attract and retain top talent across all levels of their technology landscape.

As complexity and security continue to determine the accelerated rate of innovation, CIOs in leading companies are setting new benchmarks for the role. Learn more about top priorities for IT leadership and what these modern executives are doing to surpass expectations.

* Forrester, An Executive's Checklist To Fostering A Strong Developer Experience For Business Growth June 2022.

** Forrester, The Future Of A Secure Multicloud Strategy Will Be Powered By Modern Applications.

CIO Essential Guidance: The Three Critical IT Transformations Needed to Deliver Innovation at Scale.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.