News

SINGAPORE, 22 October 2009: A new global study of more than 2,500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs), including 86 from ASEAN, released by IBM (NYSE: IBM), reveals that leveraging analytics to gain a competitive advantage and improve business decision-making is now the top priority for CIOs. More than four out of five (83 percent) survey respondents at the global level identified business intelligence and analytics – the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights – as the way they will enhance their organizations’ competitiveness compared with 87 percent at the ASEAN level.

These results and other insights are detailed in the just-released Global CIO Study 2009 (US), which is the largest face-to-face survey of CIOs ever conducted. The study, titled “The New Voice of the CIO,” represents the insights and vision of CIOs from 78 countries, 19 industries, and organizations of every size and growth levels. The study reinforces the increasingly strategic role that CIOs are playing as visionary leaders and as drivers of innovation and financial growth.

With an increased focus on data analytics, the survey also revealed that data reliability and security have emerged as increasingly urgent concerns, with 71 percent of global CIOs (ASEAN : 76 percent) planning to make additional investments in risk management and compliance.

Other key findings of the survey include:

• Global CIOs also are continuing on the path to dramatically lower energy costs, with 76 percent (ASEAN : 63 percent) undergoing or planning virtualization projects.
• 76 percent of global CIOs (ASEAN : 74 percent) anticipate building a strongly centralized infrastructure in the next five years. Furthermore, more than half of CIOs are expecting to implement completely standardized, low-cost business processes.
• Even as they build these standardized low-cost infrastructures, global CIOs are able to focus 55 percent of their time on activities that drive innovation and growth, whereas traditional IT tasks like infrastructure and operations management now consume only 45 percent of the global CIOs’ time

“CIOs are investing in business analytics capabilities to help them improve decision-making at all levels,” said Pat Toole, CIO of IBM. “In addition, in this challenging economy, CIOs understand that analytics can be key to new growth markets, whether it’s new ways to manage a utility grid or smarter healthcare systems. Managing and leveraging new intelligence through analytics is something that today’s CIO is pursuing to gain competitive advantage in these new markets.”

As the role of the CIO itself transforms so do the types of projects they lead across their enterprises, which will allow CIOs to focus less time and resources on running internal infrastructure, and more time on transformation to help their companies grow revenue. CIOs are transforming their infrastructure to focus more on innovation and business value, rather than simply running IT.

In the study, CIOs also identified the top visionary projects that they are working on now or foresee implementing in the future, ranging from process improvement to taking advantage of technologies that can provide immediate and long-term financial impact, such as: business intelligence and analytics, virtualization and green IT, service oriented architectures (SOA), service management, and cloud computing. CIOs are also focusing on mobility solutions and unified communications, collaboration and social networking tools, and Web 2.0 projects, to enable more effective communications for employees, customers, and partners.

ASEAN CIOs more highly regarded as key members of Senior Management, defining business strategy

ASEAN CIOs here closely mirror their global counterparts interms of specific characteristics - CIOs in both ranked highly in several roles, as a Visionary, Value Creator, Business Leader, Pragmatist and Cost Cutter, though ASEAN CIOs are considered less of an IT Manager, than that seen at the global level. ASEAN CIOs also shared the same focus areas when planning their future strategic visions. Business Intelligence and Analytics came out tops for both, followed by Risk Management and Compliance. They both reach out more to the business to co-create and champion innovation and are able to actively integrate business and technology for better innovation.

However, in ASEAN, CIOs are more often included as and are better accepted as members of the senior management teams as compared to the global CIOs and as a result, are more actively involved in all aspects of setting the business strategy, especially with their fellow leaders, including presenting on or deciding upon the business strategy. As true Collaborative Business Leaders, ASEAN CIOs define better business models when collaborating with their fellow leaders, and generally receive higher marks from senior management more often than their global counterparts.

ASEAN CIOs in High Growth organizations vis-à-vis Low Growth organizations, are better able to leverage the potential of third party business or IT services to improve business agility, have a solid understanding of the existing and emerging needs of both internal and external customers, expecting them to explore new channels within the next 5 years and tend to spend more time as a Business and Corporate Vision Enabler and are confident that business processes will be completely standardized and low-cost. ASEAN CIOs in Low Growth organizations differ slightly as they spend more time in their role as Core Technical Services Provider and believe more in the creation and emergence of a strongly centralized infrastructure.

“Clearly the role of the CIO is changing dramatically,” said Anthony Steel, Managing Partner, Growth Market Team, IBM Global Business Services ASEAN.

“On the one hand, they are trying to standardize routine processes and simplify their existing IT infrastructure to reduce costs, hence their growing interest in technologies such as cloud computing. On the other hand, given the central role that today’s CIO performs in driving new business models, whether it’s a Smart Grid system, an Intelligent Transport system, or a transparent food supply chain, it’s not surprising that the amount of time they are now spending on driving new kinds of growth for their companies is growing considerably.”

About the IBM 2009 CIO Study
The 2009 CIO Study is part of the IBM C-Suite Study Series. Published by the IBM Institute for Business Value, the C-Suite Study Series publishes in-depth studies for Chief Executive Officers, Chief Finance Officers, Chief Human Resource Officers and most recently, Chief Supply Chain Officers. The CIO Study included more than 2,500 face-to-face interviews, conducted over four months from January to April 2009. In addition to the detailed personal feedback, IBM also incorporated financial metrics and detailed statistical analysis into the findings.

The report also highlights a number of recommendations ranging from strategic business actions and use of key technologies that IBM has identified that CIOs can implement, based on CIO feedback from the study. The full 2009 CIO Study and interviews about the study are available at www.ibm.com/ciostudy (US), and a video with IBM CIO Pat Toole is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AqSMCREXDE (link resides outside of ibm.com).

For more information on IBM, please visit: www.ibm.com/sg

Media contact:
Ryp Yong (Ms)
Tel: 6418 1144
Mobile: +65 9750 6292
E-mail: yongryp@sg.ibm.com

Audrey Pereira (Ms)
Tel: 6418 1756
Mobile: +65 9817 4020
E-mail: pereiraa@sg.ibm.com