GE's Kate Johnson: How CIOs Can Be Heroes

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PeterF028,
User Rank: Moderator
6/15/2015 | 10:40:58 AM

Leading innovation

As the CSC CIO Survey demonstrates, CIOs are in a prime position to serve as innovative disruptors...something that most organizations truly need as we enter into a world of tech convergence. Tech is the center of everything, and oftentimes, its the CIO who has the chops needed to help with application and optimal utilization. Peter Fretty, IDG blogger working on behalf of CSC.

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jagibbons,
User Rank: Ninja
6/1/2015 | 12:05:48 PM

Re: GE's Kate Johnson: How CIOs Can Be Heroes

tzubiar, another critical factor in making this shift is to make sure your security and day-to-day operations are rock-solid. If you aren't consistent at "keeping the lights on," you, as a CIO, won't have the credibility to drive business value.

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jagibbons,
User Rank: Ninja
6/1/2015 | 12:01:01 PM

Re: Once again consumers get shafted

Agreed, impactnow. Every company has data that is valuable on the black market. No company is safe from threats and there are too many attack vectors. We all will be victims. We all need to have a solid response plan while still taking every available measure to reduce the likelihood. Make your systems less attractive as a target as the next guy. Maybe the criminals will pass you over.

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impactnow,
User Rank: Author
5/31/2015 | 1:49:35 AM

Re: Once again consumers get shafted

While companies need to be accountable for data breaches at this point in time I don't think any company or government has the people or infrastructure in place to avoid a breach. If they are targeted sadly they will be breached, there are too many holes that aren't even known and we are all struggling to catch up with the hackers minutely.

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asksqn,
User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2015 | 3:01:01 PM

Once again consumers get shafted

This article makes me chuckle. Before ANY "digital" company can even begin to drool over/consider how best to massage mass quantities of data to predict anything (or spy on consumers) it really ought to focus on securing the data from breaches. Instead, the typical rush to monetize the data is in effect. I predict bigger, badder consumer breaches as the IoT and Fortune 500 cos. like GE rush to implement the fast buck revenue model. Meanwhile, consumers end up on the short side of nothing (and ID theft) courtesy of lazy so called "C-suite" employees like Kate Johnson who can't generate revenue quick enough for shareholders.

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SunitaT0,
User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2015 | 1:06:36 PM

Re: GE and software

@tzubair: Do you Xiaomi makes little to margin profit on their smartphones? What they make up for is software and services. So I don't think GE would fail because it would create more job opportunities and make competitors create better software and services.

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tzubair,
User Rank: Ninja
5/28/2015 | 5:35:17 PM

GE and software

"Selling industrial equipment and selling software is different. ... Software is about selling an outcome -- there's nothing the customer can hold"

@Chris: I think venturing into software is one risky move by GE. What do you have to say about that? They might still be in the technology industry, but as Kate said, selling software or solutions is totally different game. There have been companies which had been lured into the software industry but they have had to give up quite soon.

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tzubair,
User Rank: Ninja
5/28/2015 | 5:30:00 PM

Re: GE's Kate Johnson: How CIOs Can Be Heroes

"I was glad to see her championing the role of the CIO in this as well. People talk a lot about 'digital' officers, are marketing spending the big bucks, and whether we're getting replaced, but that's really a non-issue; tech expertise will be essential regardless."

@zerox203: I think the role of CIO has evolved and they have championed in the company because they have moved from a pure technical role to a business oriented role which is quite strategic in many cases. Previously, their contribution to business would come about mainly by the costs they would save in the hardware and software. Now, their real value addition is linked with the value technology adds in the company and shapes the direction of the company.

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zerox203,
User Rank: Ninja
5/28/2015 | 5:05:21 PM

Re: GE's Kate Johnson: How CIOs Can Be Heroes

She's absolutely right about one thing; $4 billion is a lot for a business that most people won't normally associate GE with. It says a lot about how valuable their connection to vertical industries is via their equipment, and where those industries are going. I caught myself halfway through, realizing you were talking about larger-scale industrial gear, and not IoT-type-endpoints as we're tending to think of them (re: lots of small sensors) - I imagine that's going to add another dimension still when we're talking about analytics in the coming years, and GE wants to get out in front of that so they're the name everyone knows once the demand is there. Sounds smart to me. Combine tons of data there, commodity hardware working alongside specialized gear, and yeah, we're gonna need platforms and software to pull all that data together.

I was glad to see her championing the role of the CIO in this as well. People talk a lot about 'digital' officers, and marketing spending the big bucks, or whether we're getting replaced, but that's really a non-issue; tech expertise will be essential regardless. When you talk about delivering value, think about shaving just a few seconds or what-have-you off a processthat's operating at a huge scale. That's a ton of money saved. Doing it for one area of the business is a proof-of-concept for the others... and you can use the money saved to reinvest in more software, and more infrastructure, which is getting cheaper and cheaper. If you see an opportunity for that, CIOs can definitely be heroes... and you'll have to excuse me for humming the David Bowie song of the same name while reading this.

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