Here are my notes on the second of four panels I attended at the MIT CIO symposium. See MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Part One: The Virtual Organization for the introduction to this series. As I said in the introduction, I found this event interesting to hear what people in these roles are thinking rather than as a source for new ideas. However, this is not a criticism. 

CIO Keynote Panel: CIO Leadership and the Bottom Line

Moderator: Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, Director Center for Digital Business at MIT. Erik first asked the panel how their bottom line was measured. Then he asked them to reflect on how the attribution of their efforts toward broader company performance is determined. Next, he asked about use of the cloud. The panel went around but I grouped their comments over the period under their name.

Mr. Bob Greenberg, General Manager Information Technology Optimization IBM. He was a CIO before. At IBM the CIO role usually is for two years and then you are rotated to other business roles. Bob said the CIO provides great experience for other business roles. Bob spoke about the metrics in IBM that he needs to pay attention to. His group provides support across IBM and he has been there for 30 years. Software and services have become their largest groups raising over hardware. Now the metrics, first there are the traditional cost and revenue ones. There is also a broader range such as time to get someone skilled. 

Bob said that attribution was not that difficult. There is project plan for all activities with milestones costs and benefits. Bob said that the cloud will make sense in certain places such as test and development. It also makes sense to have a virtual desktop to reduce cost of changing physical desktops.

RADM Elizabeth Hight, Rear Admiral, Vice Director Defense Information Systems Agency. There are 7 million users plus mission partners – other countries and NGOs so scale is a big issue. Her group provides services to all of the DoD and provides the data backbone. The metrics for her group are different than the private sector. They are rated on mission assurance, can the people they support do the job. The specifics of this changes constantly, sometimes hourly. The bottom line is whether the user can get the data when needed.

Elizabeth discussed their use of cloud computing to provide data exchange with unanticipated partners on short notice in places such as Pakistan where users (e.g., Doctors without Borders) can go into the DoD intranet and provide credit card for an ID to get data and other IT services. They provide mobile wifi and other means of access in remote areas. As a cloud provider she looks to virtualization a lot to save time and money. However, there is a cultural issue here, more than the technology. Elizabeth said there are many “rock cutters” who need to see physical things but they are overcoming this resistance. She thinks their security is better in the cloud because they have tighter configuration control.

When asked for examples of when IT makes a difference in combat, Elizabeth mention unmanned aerial surveillance planes that are piloted remotely by pilots who are not even located where the vehicle is housed. The data is provided to many different groups with different focuses and this gives a big advantage to make decisions quickly.

Mr. Stephen F. Schuckenbrock, President, Large Enterprise Dell Inc. His group supports all customers with 500 or more employees except the government. Prior to running this group he was CIO for Dell. Stephen thinks that being a CIO is a great job and you get to see all aspects of the business. It is great experience for other business roles. His main measurement issues are whether his group impacts the financial bottom line and generates cash. This is what he is measured on. He feels that CIO has to be able to say no to projects that will not help the bottom line. IT should not simply be an order taker who is measured on timeliness and whether it is on budget. They need to be doing the right effort also.

He looks at the cloud on a case-by-case basis. It makes sense in some places such as CRM. They use Agile to decrease development times. He is also a big proponent of virtualization and feels this holds a key to optimizing the cloud. They shut down 10,000 physical servers a few years ago. This helps innovation by reducing infrastructure barriers. There is demand for more IT than can be provided and virtualization helps extend capabilities.

When asked about spam, he said that 97% of external emails are spam. They filter most but some slip through. There is no complete solution. There is an ongoing battle here. He does expect spammers to wear out eventually because of low success rates.

Ms. Jo Hoppe, CIO PAREXEL International Corporation. PAREXEL does outsourced clinical trials for pharma and heavily relies on technology. These trials can go over 30 countries with many players. The average successful clinical drug takes over 800 million dollars in investment to get to market. Many never make it. So time and efficiency is critical.

Jo said there are three ways to think about IT metrics. First there are traditional financial and service delivery targets. Second there are more strategic goals for the organization. You should measure everyone on these to make sure everyone is headed in same direction. Third, there is business and IT alignment. In other words, what did IT contribute to success of the business?

They use portfolio management in IT to make sure they have anappropriate mix of projects to meet goals. IT partners with business on this so strategy and priorities are driven by the business end. The measure are also worked through with business.

Jo said the cloud makes sense for highly commoditized applications and also areas like disaster recovery that is used only rarely. They are heavily regulated and have many security and privacy issues that preclude the cloud. They often need to have closed systems.

They use Agile development with BPM software to change the way they work with business users. Now they can do rapid turn around with business users for ongoing feedback. Agile development is critical to the IT – business alignment. Now projects take less than 3 months. If it takes longer that means they did not break it into manageable segments.