Pearl Zhu on Top 10 Challenges facing the CIO

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

Pearl Zhu posted a nice article over on the Enterprise CIO Forum titled Ready, Set, Go: CIO’s Top Ten Challenges.

In that article, Pearl highlights the issues facing CIO’s and IT today…and does a good job of outlining why these issues exist.

Nice article and worth the jump over to read it.

The top 10 challenges facing the CIO today, according to Pearl, are:

• Cloud Strategies & Solutions
• IT Maturity
• Big Data Analytics
• Application Modernization
• Security and Governance/Risk/Control Management
• IT Strategic ROI
• Business Process Optimization/Innovation
• Green IT/Sustainability
• IT Talent Management
• IT Culture Asset

Pretty good list there…and a very big list.

These are challenges for sure…but are they challenges that have just cropped up? Are they just now becoming something that CIO’s and IT groups should be focused on?

Perhaps…but I think there are a few items on that list that should have been front-and-center for years.  Culture?  Yep.  Talent Management?  Yep.  Security, Modernization, BPO, Strategic ROI?  Yep Yep Yep etc.

Don’t get me wrong…Pearl does a great job of highlighting the issues…and these are the challenges facing CIO’s today, but they aren’t challenges that have just arisen. They may be the top challenges, but most have been the top challenges for years.

I do like seeing things like “culture’ and ‘talent management’ though.  Makes me feel good about the future of IT – we are finally seeing some focus on the people of IT rather than just the technology of IT.

What do you think about this list…anything missing?

With your current workload and team, can your IT group conquer these challenges? If no – how will you prioritize what gets done…what of these 10 challenges is most important to you and your company?

Image Credit: Gold top 10 winner By sam_churchill on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.