CIO Straight Talk - Issue 10 - 20

IT TAkeS An eCOSYSTeM
The roles of IT and the CIO are so different than
they were even a decade ago. There is no longer
any wall between technology and the business.
IT is integral in every single thing that the
business does. And because of that, you really
have to partner with the business.
For an IT organization to become more than
a service provider, it must get close to the
business and its customers. I consider myself to
be a "customer-facing" CIO. I expect my teams
to understand the business's opportunities and
challenges, key strategies, and its customers
intimately. That's the only way you can be sure
you design IT for business value and can deliver it.
IT is in a unique position within the organization.
We have the infrastructure, deep process, and
application knowledge, as well as a horizontal
end-to-end view of the business. Additionally,
we have a wealth of data knowledge and insights
at our fingertips that we can use to help our
business leaders make the next best decision
to enable growth or innovation. So in an era of
digital transformation, we bring a lot to the table.
But to do that well, we need to partner and
collaborate with all facets of the business. If
there are any walls or silos, we have to break
them down. We need to integrate IT with teams
across the business and help influence the
decision making. That's true for IT and its vendor
partners in value delivery, as well. The traditional
vendor relationship does not work in an era of
digital disruption. You must have a partner with
whom you share strategies, ideas, and pain points.
No IT organization can do this alone.

THe DeMAnDS OF DIgITAL
TRAnSFORMATIOn
The digitization of business is a real gamechanger, but it also creates challenges for the IT
organization. For many, digital transformation
impacts the traditional cyclical nature of
business. That's certainly been the case at
Adobe, as it evolved from a maker of software
that was packed up and shipped out the door
to a SaaS provider that must be available and

connected to customers 24/7. That demands a
huge change in how IT operates. Systems cannot
go down. Business processes must be flexible. IT
has to be responsive.
Another change: As you become a true partner
with the business (versus order taker), you need
to understand and anticipate business needs so
that you can empower teams with the right set of
tools and platforms.

"DiGiTAL TRANSFoRMATioN
iMPACTS ThE TRADiTioNAL
CyCLiCAL NATuRE oF BuSiNESS."

In order to accomplish that at Adobe, we've
decided that IT needs to emulate the values of a
cloud provider-to have cloud-like characteristics
encoded in our DNA. Look at the value that
cloud computing provides-it's highly available,
scalable, and easy to use. We want to have
a cloud-like experience dealing with our IT
organization. When we design IT solutions,
we want to make them flexible, scalable, and
easy to implement. We want to deliver selfservice solutions, effectively taking IT out
of the equation with services and processes
that can more effectively be managed by
business stakeholders. It's not that we want to
eliminate the IT organization. We want to make
implementing and consuming new technology
solutions as seamless as possible for the
business, while opening up opportunities for IT
to look around the corners and drive business
impact in new ways.
For instance, at Adobe we are capitalizing on
the incredible opportunity we have in creating
what we call a data-driven operating model.
The company has no shortage of reports
that give decision-makers an analysis of what
has happened in the past. But the digital era
is about looking ahead and making datadriven decisions about the future. So in IT we
are bringing together our various streams of
data-transactional data, operational data,
customer behavioral data-so that we can enable
our business leaders to analyze them more
prescriptively and predictively.

CIO Straight Talk - Issue 10

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CIO Straight Talk - Issue 10