How Digital Transformation Fundamentally Altered the Role of the CIO

The digital transformation has been firmly entrenched in our lives for seemingly a decade now. It is all-encompassing and everywhere to be seen. The whole thing got started with IT-specific topics like cloud computing and big data; it has gone on to change practically every business process, and entire business models, too.

Business is Changing

What makes a company a digital company is not that it is heavily focused on networking and computerization – it is much more than that. These topics instead serve as the foundation for new types of business. There are now a vast number of companies whose business models could not function were it not for software and networking. They include the likes of eBay and Facebook. Digitalization is further spawning new and novel types of business models like sharing, crowdworking, and co-creation, which in turn are producing companies such as Uber and Airbnb. That is having an impact on conventional business models that need to change and adapt to the new circumstances. Some of these will even become obsolete and vanish from the market altogether. Topics like the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 clearly show that the digital transformation is not limited to a few individual cases or cutting-edge companies. Rather, they demonstrate that the economy and society as a whole are affected by the digitalization.

This is changing the role played by IT, which does more than simply deliver services. It is now essential for modern business to function, be that ERP, e-mail, telephony, and even venerable Excel. Where the digital transformation defines the business itself, IT is the main driver and must serve in this role for this transformation to succeed.

Read the entire article here, How Digital Transformation Fundamentally Altered the Role of the CIO

Via the fine folks at Dell