CEO Mike Friedenberg ponders the big questions for IT leaders during his summer beach brainstorm. I hope you’ve been enjoying the summer and taking some time to recharge. Given some recent R&R myself, I came back to work with an assortment of thoughts and questions that floated up in my mind while I was relaxing on the beach.Here are a few for your consideration: Who will emerge as winners in the battle of the IT market Goliaths and the startup Davids? It’s been remarkable to watch all the mergers and acquisitions in the tech market as the big players refashion themselves to recapture customer relevance. The big guys have powerful sales engines to drive scale but struggle to produce those innovative top-of-mind solutions CIOs want to buy. On the other side, highly targeted, nimble startups are doing some amazing work in cloud, social, mobile, big data and the enterprise consumer space. Yet they falter when it comes to distribution channels, scalability and support. Who will win out? Are wearables really the next big tech wave? If you attended the recent D11 conference or CITE Expo, you’d certainly believe wearable computers are well on their way. Could Google Glass become the new iPhone? (To me, it will come down to the apps, as it always does.) Lenovo entering the U.S. server, storage and mobile device markets strikes me as a bold move, given how Dell is going private, IBM is rumored to be selling off its low-end server line, and Oracle is still struggling to make money from its Sun acquisition. Are there sustainable profits still to be made in this category, or has hardware become just the wrapper for software? What will the IT organization look like in 5 years? Our sister publication, Computerworld, ran a piece in early June headlined “IT Departments Won’t Exist in Five Years” about an evolution toward a hybrid model of “tech consultants and integrators.” What do you think? Finally, I’m really looking forward to our upcoming CIO 100 Symposium later this month (Aug. 11-13 in Colorado Springs), where we’ll welcome more than 300 CIOs and senior IT executives from the world’s top companies, including our 2013 CIO 100 award winners. Our theme this year is “Thriving in an Age of Disruptive Innovation.” Sounds right on target, doesn’t it? I hope to see you there.Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn. Related content Opinion The future of A.I. ethics is in our hands When so many of the world's smartest people warn us about 'killer robots' and other ethical issues inherent in artificial intelligence, we should heed their call to make sure A.I. is used for societal good By Michael Friedenberg Aug 31, 2015 2 mins Robotics Opinion Beyond Moore's Law: Five technologies that will change the future IDG CEO Mike Friedenberg is watching the tech horizon and sees game-changing technologies in A.I., robotics, quantum computing and more. By Michael Friedenberg May 21, 2015 2 mins CIO 3D Printers Technology Industry Opinion Security crashes the boardroom party Given the recent spate of headline-grabbing data breaches, CIOs need to be prepared to answer a lot of board questions about risk. By Michael Friedenberg Mar 30, 2015 2 mins Cybercrime Security Opinion Are You Ready to Replace Yourself? CIOs rarely get to name their successors, and companies overall do a poor job of succession planning. CEO Michael Friedenberg says it's time to get serious about closing the succession gap. By Michael Friedenberg Jan 28, 2015 2 mins CIO Mentoring Careers Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe