Oct 2018, I had the honor of moderating a CIO panel at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management at Lake Forest, IL near Chicago. The lively discussion at the panel centered around Digital Transformation driven by Cloud, Big Data, and AI — and the challenges faced by CIOs leading these transformations.
First off, I must say that the three leaders on the panel were fantastic — a mix of Enterprise CIOs across healthcare, the federal government and state and local municipal services. The panelists were: Siva Balu, Head of IT at BlueCross BlueShield Association; Bill Willkowski, Head of Enterprise Architecture at Fermilab, and George Coleman, CTO — Chicago Transit Authority.
https://dzone.com/articles/questions-every-cio-must-ask-before-embarking-on-a
Above are the questions that I posed to the panel to guide the discussion about how to plan for a digital transformation journey and what the key requirements for a such a critical endeavor are. It was evident during the discussion that my fellow panelists differed on their answers to these questions, based on their different target customers and divergent requirements. (They did all agree, though, that their organizations have to operate in a hybrid-cloud state — supporting different types of environments on-prem and in the public cloud). These categories of questions offer a framework to guide CXOs as they embark on a cloud digital transformation. I invite you to review these questions below as you’re planning your own cloud journey, to ensure you are successful and that you position your organization for success in today’s digital age.