February 7, 2000

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Optical Services Will Give CIOs Freedom--And Added Duties

By Stephen Saunders

t doesn't take a genius to see that if metro optical services take off as predicted, they'll have a profound effect on the jobs of CIOs and IT managers.

That doesn't necessarily mean these jobs will get easier. For one thing, CIOs and IT managers probably will have to manage the same number of direct reports. "This isn't like the '70s, where the value proposition of networking technology was to downsize organizations," says John Marchese, director of strategic iBusiness development at Citrix Systems Inc. Jim Lysyk, industrial sales manager at Westburne Electric Alberta, a division of Westburne Inc., agrees. "Using an application service provider didn't reduce our staff numbers," he says. "It just means they can get on with jobs we want them to do instead of fighting fires."

And while IT managers and their staffs will be freed from the rudimentary but time-consuming tasks involved in managing and upgrading desktop applications, that freedom will bring a new responsibility: managing the relationships with outsourcing providers. "In the long term, the CIO may well end up dealing with five or 10 outsourcing vendors--some handling vertical apps like financial, others offering office productivity solutions," Marchese says. "Instead of managing software, they'll be running a service management bureau."

Still, some IT managers look forward to the added duties. "I wish I could deal with outside parties, because the worst application supplier you'll ever find is an internal department," says an IT manager at a major company who requested anonymity. "If they're bad, you can't do anything about it because they are part of your company, and they're not accountable to you."

Becoming a strategic service negotiator should be a good move for IT managers. Because they will be able to focus on making their companies' core revenue-generating businesses more efficient, their role within the company will become much more strategic.

How long before these changes to the IT staff's job descriptions start to kick in? It depends on the size of the company staffers are working for. The applications outsourcing model enabled by optical networking will appeal to small to midsize companies before it catches on at enterprises that are big enough to qualify for discounts on IT costs, and have expert staff to run high-end applications.

Return to the main story, "IT At The Speed Of Light."

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