CIOs and Mission-Critical Applications
The position of Chief Information Officer is changing in response to the unpredictable economy and competitive business market, in which organizations increasingly turn to technology and business process innovation to gain competitive advantage.
According to a recent study, leading CIOs are playing dramatically more influential business roles than they have at any time in the past. The study's findings reveal a new class of CIOs—executives who recognize the new demands of the position and are committed to being enterprise change-agents. Almost half of those surveyed indicated they have broadened their responsibilities beyond the traditional CIO-only role to absorb some form of business responsibility.
In fact, of the many of those now occupying the CIO position, one-third have come to the role of senior IT decision maker with a business (non-technology) background. However, whether from a business or IT background, the majority of CIOs agree that over the next two years, the most important aspect of their roles will be that of someone who makes business driven IT his/her focus.
The Driving Themes of 2009 & 2010
When asked about key areas that are keeping you awake at night, CIOs have consistently placed keeping the mission-critical applications available to support business needs within the top 5 priorities. In addition to up-time of mission critical applications and the infrastructure that supports them, our customers are also looking at cloud computing and more cost effective ways to run applications, while adhering to compliance, governance and privacy requirements.
At Grid Dynamics, we have one mission and only one mission: Scaling mission-critical systems. Our focus includes 4 specific areas.
1) Availability – Mission-critical applications must be available 100% of the time
2) Latency – Response time must be acceptable for business users and customers
3) Throughput – Transactional systems must be able to perform transactions, completely
4) Manageability – Manageability of complex systems requires experience and best practices
We can help in these areas and we have been told by our customers that the reason that they asked us to be a part of their team was to “get it right, the first time”. We do not take this lightly, and are able to contribute to our customer’s success.
If any of these areas are on your list in 2009 and beyond, please contact us.