CIO Summit 2012: Looking beyond technology

More than 250 chief information officers and IT managers gathered yesterday at the Sofitel Wentworth hotel for the 2012 Sydney CIO Summit, hosted by CIO magazine.

The summit, which was opened by IDC managing director Gary Clarke, had a split focus according to CIO editor Tim Mendham. “On the one hand, we’ve looked at some examples of how technology has been enabling business,” Menham said. “But there has also been a focus on the CIO role itself — how CIOs can transform from managers of technology to business strategists.”

CIO’s publisher, Barbara Simon, described the summit as “a huge success”. “We had a full house with more than 250 CIOs and IT leaders in attendance,” Simon said. Simon said the organisers will seek a larger facility for the 2013 summit.

Our great line-up of CIO and Analyst speakers shared thought provoking knowledge and best practices and feedback from the attendees and sponsors is that our CIO Summit is a must attend event each year.

In the first session analyst Tim Dillon outlined findings from IDC’s annual ANZ CIO survey. Dillon said contrary to some CIOs’ belief, BYOD does not save money. In fact, most organisations see an increase in costs. Despite this, BYOD is inevitable and CIOs need to plan for it.

Calibre Global’s CIO, Jason Cowie, addressed using partnerships to deliver IT projects. Although traditional client-supplier models can work, they are often one-sided, Cowie said. He advocates a partnership model based on a win/win approach for both parties.

David Schneider, CIO of New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, shared his experience of implementing unified communications. UC has helped the office reduce employee travel and Schneider also expects a reduction in the organisation’s carbon footprint. Training was an important part of ensuring employee adoption of the new Microsoft Lync UC system.

James Price, managing director of aged care services company Mirus Australia, spoke about developing an aged care metrics (ACM) system, using business intelligence BI to provide better patient data to care providers. The new system went live in February after six months of testing.

Medibank Health Solutions’ CIO, Brett Winn, gave an overview of his organisation’s unified communications journey. Prior to implementing CIC’s UC offering, the company had three different vendors running its contact centres and struggled to meet some of its obligations to its clients.

A panel session offered CIOs tips on attracting and retaining staff, making sure IT teams get the right people and keep them round for the long term.