Innovate Or Die Is The Battle Cry; I’ll Get Right On It—As Soon As We’re Ready

Authored by Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium.

The following post was sponsored by Cisco. The opinions, thoughts and observations, however, are completely my own.

Over the past three months I’ve been writing frequently on the difficulty that CIO’s and other IT leaders are shouldering in the face of a relentless pursuit of keeping pace with new technologies. Today’s IT leaders are facing the issues of aligning to business growth objectives while spearheading practical, cost-effective and efficient use cases for AI, cloud services, automation, big data and the IoT (internet of things), within their organization. In the midst of what often feels like a scramble to keep pace with an ever-moving target, the changes and growing pains we are experiencing highlight a massive opportunity for CIO and IT leaders. I can say with relative certainty there is room for significant optimism as well. At no time in history has the role of the CIO and leadership in IT been positioned more prominently within the organization than it is today. While performance pressures rise, so does the opportunity to be a primary leader driving business innovation, growth and overall organizational success.

Recently I was at Cisco Live in San Diego and was inspired by the power we are being offered through the vehicle of technology to make a genuine difference in the world. I was particularly moved by the idea that we are reinventing ourselves individually and collectively through emerging technologies envisioned years ago by luminaries and now in our midst, fully functional and on-scene today. Nothing stays the same! David Goeckeler, EVP, Cisco shared, “we are reinventing networking.” When he said we are reinventing networking, David was sharing the importance of how we interface with the network, and the meaningful data we can mine from it.

When I think of a network that is redefined, a key component is the IoT. With 28.5 billion* connected devices forecast by 2022, the exponential growth of both internal and external networks is beyond staggering. Internet and external network devices are key to the IoT, and with billions of devices connected to one another… machine-to-machine, the cybersecurity challenges are mind boggling and are absolutely on everyone’s mind. Within the juicy juxtaposition of cybersecurity threats and challenges that a connected universe of machines talking to machines creates, lies a massive layer of opportunity available for organizations digitally poised and ready to seize a larger slice of the pie.

According to the Cisco IT Operations Readiness Index, 79% of preemptive organizations say that the internet of things technologies are critical to running their IT infrastructure more efficiently and 74% also gather operational data from the IoT. Herein lies the rub… the fruit of opportunity is ready for the harvest for those that are successfully running the gauntlet of challenges set before IT leaders today. Innovation provides a massive opportunity, but only when executed correctly. This isn’t our first rodeo, is it? How many of us have felt engulfed and swept away by the battle cry of “Innovate or Die!” for several decades already? We have talked ad nauseam about digital transformation, the need for organizations to transform or be left behind choking on the dust trail from the crumbling headstones of brand names no longer with us.

Are you tired of talk? Are you ready for execution? Do you know where to start? How can CIOs effectively discover where they rank on operations readiness? Another gem I discovered while participating at Cisco Live is that Cisco does offer a simple online tool as a companion to the results of the IT Operational Readiness Index called the IT Operations Readiness Assessment. The assessment acts to benchmark IT operations against a peer baseline and then goes the extra mile to offer recommendations for execution. As the CEO of Thulium, I cannot execute on digital transformation without a clearly defined roadmap. It’s impossible to get to where we want to go unless we know exactly where we are in this moment. The writing is on the wall, if you’re an IT leader, you’re already facing it every day. Are you ready to see where your organization ranks? It’s super simple, access the assessment here. May we all be empowered to face the challenges ahead tomorrow whilst accessing every opportunity available to us today.