CIO’s as Investors

CIO’s are required as a primary role to be investment managers. The company is acquiring technology assets and we carefully choose our investment strategy against a matrix of objectives. A primary objective is to select solutions which exceed or can be extended to exceed the requirements of the business, so that these solutions are flexible, extensible, and can grow with the business. At the same time we are required to invest wisely. CIO’s spend much of their time managing the selection process, managing the resulting investment portfolio, and assuring returns.  On the whole, too few CIO’s have made the switch to open source and SaaS based sourcing strategies. This latest downturn should change all that.

The Old Model

Fundamentally, the model within which these investments have been made in the past, focusing on perpetual license models, is obsolete. In good times, it is inferior simply due to the large inordinate up-front cost to acquiring technology. In an economic downturn, it’s worse than inferior, as the company finds itself with sunk costs that cannot be recovered in lean years. (more…)