A big year, but CIO survival is in question over next few years.
I agree this is a big year for CIO's but it will extend beyond this year.
I am already seeing virtualisation, cloud, bring your own equipment etc. causing the percentage of IT spend controlled by the CIO decrease.
All the aaS's - especially SaaS mean that the customers of the CIO can now choose to go elsewhere, the monoply is over and commoditisation of solutions is beginning.
The big question in organisations will be whether they need a CIO or not (probably totally missing the strategic partner and vision role the CIO cold play). I think many will go without a CIO and then learn the hard way how difficult and strategically important a well managed information system strategy and execution is.
Probably the most endangered IT roles would be in the in-house data centre. They will be no more needed than in-house electricity generation. IT will matter very much, but running platforms (hardware and layered software) will be far cheaper and more reliable out of house.
CIO's should start to get their business architecture and enterprise architecture capabilites up to speed. They will support the procurement manager in making data centre service provider choices and contracts.
