CIO Summit: Mobility soars as priority for CIOs

In the space of just 12 months mobility has increased dramatically as a priority for Australian CIOs, according to IDC’s latest CIO Forecast for Management Survey.

The analyst firm’s Asia Pacific associate vice-president of mobility research, Tim Dillon, told the CIO Summit in Sydney that last year “mobility wasn’t there as a priority”.

“It has absolutely climbed this year #8212; the consumerisation of IT is genuinely driving change,” he said.

“The consumerisation of IT and mobility at a business level is changing what CIOs are doing.

“Mobility wasn’t there as a priority last year…it has absolutely climbed this year – the consumerisation of IT is genuinely driving change.”

See all the action from the event in the CIO Summit 2011 slideshow.

The rise of ‘bring your own technology’ schemes #8212; BYOT #8212; have shifted some investment away from desktop computing and into mobile devices

The survey of some 300 CIOs from across Australia and New Zealand also indicated that innovation was relatively low among IT professionals, which Dillon said came as a surprise.

“About 30 per cent said they we’re doing well with innovation…and it did surprise me,” he said.

“I expected the rate of innovation to be much higher – I’ve gone back to the results and can’t find the answer [as] to why those results aren’t higher,” he said.

Another trend, Dillon, was the increase in social media adoption.

“There is a wealth of BI or analytics tools that are easy to set up… but we aren’t using these to reach customers,” he said.

“We’re starting to think of social media as a business tool, but we are only slowly going that way.”

Earlier during the summit, Gen-i Australia’s chief executive, Paul Wilson, told attendees that CIOs should welcome rather than fear employees’ desire to bring their own devices to work.