Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it.  The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and the massive number of IT failures have rapidly changed the role of the CIO.  Saddled with the burden of maintaining legacy projects and faced with a shortage in budget and resources, businesses now move around the IT team as they must meet a flurry of business requirements.  CIO’s have lost a lot of control in guiding how technology is used in the enterprise because the world of consumer tech has out innovated enterprise class technologies.

CIO’s And Their Organizations Challenged By The Pace Of Change In The 2010′s

Similar to this past decade, organizations will face massive amounts of change in the next decade.  While change is nothing new to CIO’s and their organizations, the velocity of change has increased – to a point where the rate of obsolescence outpaces the rate of change.  Conversations with over 200 CIO’s this year reveal an anxiety in remaining nimble, cutting costs, and just keeping up with change.  CIO’s must rapidly respond to disruptive forces in the market, workforce dynamics, business models, and pace of technology adoption (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.  Four areas of change responsible for major disruptions in today’s organizations

(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)

The Bottom Line – The CIO Role Shifts To Match Next Gen Enterprise Requirements

What’s the role of the CIO in this next gen enterprise?  Well, next gen CIO’s must help organizations navigate complexity while realizing the benefits of a solid business technology strategy.   While the immediate focus may be on hot topics such as security and risk, third party maintenance, cloud and SaaS, and email replacement and unified communications, there are significant transformations across 11 broader skill sets (see Figure 2.)  Next Gen CIO’s must begin the process of transforming themselves and organizations in 2010 to meet the demands of the decade, anticipating the disruptive business models, technologies, and processes to come.

Figure 2. Eleven Skill Shifts For The Next Gen CIO

(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)

Oracle’s Fusion Apps Addresses A Broad Set Of Horizontal Modules

Oracle’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Ellison announced the code completion of Fusion Apps in today’s late afternoon keynote.  Though Ellison did not give precise guidance on general availability (GA), he did hint that the product would be available, “sometime in 2010″.  The product currently undergoes extensive testing and will comprise of  key modules including:

• Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management
• Oracle Fusion Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
• Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, And Compliance
• Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management
• Oracle Fusion Financial Management
• Oracle Fusion Procurement
• Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management

Some key hallmarks of Oracle’s Fusion Applications V 1. (see Figure 1) include:

• Role based design
• Extensive provision for proactive reporting and alerts
• Web 2.0 like usability
• SOA architecture for integration of legacy applications
• Multiple deployment options including on-premise, hosting, and multi-tenant SaaS

The V1 product will not deliver out of the box capabilities to support:

• Discrete Manufacturing
• Process Manufacturing
• Public Sector

Figure 1. Fusion Apps Move Towards A Social Enterprise/Social Business Apps User Experience

(Source: Oracle Corporation )

The Bottom Line – Oracle Takes A Two Prong Strategy And Seeks Domination Of The Apps Market

Oracle’s continues to prove success in its business model.  By acquiring the leading companies with significant recurring revenue streams, it can drive economies of scale to make above average R&D investments.  The result – enough innovation in existing product lines to compel customers to pay maintenance and upgrade; and the time and resources to build a next generation product.  Should Oracle successfully deliver on Fusion Apps to customers in 2010, SAP will have to play catch up in mind share as many sources state that there are no plans for a new product until 2013/2014.  Other vendors will have to leverage or partner for middleware and PaaS options in order to sustain key Web 2.0 innovations in the enterprise.

Your POV.

Is seeing believing? As an Oracle customer will this compel you to stay on Apps Unlimited or make a move to Fusion Apps?  If you aren’t a customer, will you now consider Oracle in your short lists?  Feel free to post your comments here or send me an email at rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Thanks to the 799 registrants and 458 attendees who participated in today’s webinar on The Future of Business.  There’s so much to cover across leadership, innovation, customer, and enterprise as we enter a more social, connected business world.   The key thing we learned today was just how interested everyone is about these converging trends that shape the future of business.  To succeed, we’ll have to move beyond interest and towards action.  For those who missed out, here are today’s slides:

The Future Of Business by Altimeter Group

Your POV

Keep the dialogue going.  Check out the #futurebiz tweets.  What do you see are the key trends?   When do you think we’ll get there? Post your comment here or reach me direct at r at altimetergroup dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.