10 Mary Meeker Slides That Should Matter Most to CIOs

Eric Lundquist is a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. Eric Lundquist, who was editor-in-chief at eWEEK (previously PC WEEK) from 1996-2008 authored this feature for eWEEK to share his thoughts on technology, products and services. No investment advice is offered in this piece. All duties are disclaimed. Lundquist works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this feature and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

The rise of the tablet means more than BYOD for your company. Tablets are the new change agent for corporations with sales personnel, marketing, delivery and media companies building their organizations around mobile employees and customers. CIOs are going to have to juggle four form factors (desktops, notebooks, tablets and smartphones), which will push security from device security to data security. Content management systems will become adaptive to the device, and cloud computing will be the place where most of the corporate horsepower will reside.

While some companies are still making the transition from fixed to mobile, the CIOs with the most on the ball are getting developers and their tech infrastructure ready for wearable and everywhere computing. The wearable, everywhere trend is coming on strong. Not everyone realizes that in the “Internet of Things” you are one of those things. Health monitoring, social networks and video everywhere will rise along with the wearable trend.

CIOs need to think about networking and plan for an era when billions of units start hitting their networks. The corporate network infrastructure was just not designed for millions and billions of network requests. Cloud computing only compounds the network workload. In their budgeting, CIOs need to really consider what it will cost to get their corporate network up to the billions of hits coming their way.

If your employees and staffers are checking their smartphones 150 times a day, there is not all that much time left for real work. Thinking of ways to cut through the digital clutter and get projects accomplished is the latest strategic necessity for CIOs. Achieving focus in a distracted world is one of the big, new management topics. The devices have outpaced the business management techniques to get things done in an always-distracted world.

The offline and online connections for businesses are the new connections your company needs to make. CIOs need to spend time diagramming their online and offline operations and consider how to make the connection. Google, Facebook and Amazon grew up in an online world. Business software and functions were developed before the offline/online connections became a necessity. Adapting existing systems to the online demands of customers will be a formidable task.

CIOs need to help CEOs find and encourage the passion that drives their companies. Competitors can arise based on one entrepreneur’s excitement about doing old businesses in new ways. CIOs need to get with the program or risk being left at the roadside. If your CEO is simply a business caretaker, your company is at risk. CIOs will be judged on whether they can create the tools and systems to let innovation flourish in their companies.

How does your company stack up against the Internet leaders? While a lot of discussion is about buzz and other non-measurable aspects of Internet companies, money talks even in the Web world. Building a technology infrastructure is only one part of making a company Internet-oriented. CIOs too often report to CFOs and leave the number crunching to the bean counters. This is a mistake. While CIOs don’t have to become accounting wizards, they do need to understand the financial underpinnings of their companies and how those underpinnings differ from their Internet competitors.

This may be the most difficult task for CIOs. The looming shortage of talent, particularly for software developers, will be the deciding factor for succeeding in the mobile, big data age. CIOs need to be building skills now in their organizations. The looming gap between projects that need skilled system operators and developers and the shortage of graduates will continue to hinder corporate growth. CIOs need to rethink staff development. CIOs need to make sure they are developing the talent pool their companies will need.

Technology matters. CEOs are betting on technology to make their companies strategic competitors, and they are betting on their CIOs to give them the technology edge. Staying up with technology change is always difficult. However, if mobile, social, big data and cloud computing are going to be the new tech drivers, it is up to the CIO to make sure they are on top of those trends. If the CIO is still spending all of his or her time putting out fires and keeping the servers running rather than working on technology understanding and competitive analysis, then the CIO’s career will be hindered and his or her company will be left behind. It’s time to delegate the necessary, but not game-changing tasks and get up to speed on technology innovation.

This chart is less about the demise of the WinTel alliance than about how fast change can happen. The days of building a technology infrastructure around one vendor’s offerings are done. CIOs need to be ready for a fast changing, heterogeneous world of technology. The WinTel era will be remembered for providing a product road map that corporations could embrace and budget. The rearranging of the technology needs based on customer sentiment, big data and mobility are all coming at the same time. CIOs should pin this chart on their wall to remember just how calm the seas were and how much is changing right now.