The Evolution of the IT Leader

Computerworld - Information technology is no longer the black box in the corporate basement, and CIOs are getting accustomed to their seats in the boardroom. With five decades of corporate experience to look back on, IT leaders are prepared to consider where technology and their roles are headed.

We asked four famous CIOs to help us examine the artifacts of the evolving IT culture and the changing function of the IT leader.

Tabulating Machines to Mainframes

In the 1960s, companies were just growing out of tabulating machines and into computers. IT was all about data processing, or DP. The closest thing to a CIO was the director of DP. The skill set was strictly technical, and more often than not, the office was in the basement.

"We worked for the controller and did all the back-office stuff," says Charlie Feld. "Nobody in the company even knew where we were."

DP was focused on automating manual functions, especially in finance and transaction processing. It was characterized by the terms centralized, glass house, controlled environment, mainframe computing and time sharing.

"People often thought of this function as a utility for the corporation," recalls Ron Ponder. "It added little external or informational value."

While IT did the grunt work, it was the chief financial officer who got the glory, says Paul A. Strassmann. "The CIO worked for the CFO to install systems, which allowed the CFO to know all about cost, production and shipment," he says. "The CFO was the first to figure out that information technology gave him unbelievable power because he could know the results from the factories before the factory manager." And it was the CFO who controlled the mainframe that powered that information.

Miniskirts and Minicomputers

In the 1970s, engineers and production and marketing people rebelled against the CFO's reign and bought minicomputers for their units. "Suddenly we had a devolution of power," Strassmann says.

DP didn't just work for accounting anymore. "All the function heads began to realize they could improve productivity by using technology," Feld says. Soon, IT was doing so much work for the business unit vice presidents that its name changed to management information systems, or MIS.

The information landscape was soon a mishmash of misaligned data. Simultaneously, a new generation of IT leaders with systems integration skills was acquiring power by implementing and controlling early networks of mainframes with dumb terminals. "They were clunky and bad," Strassmann recalls. But they were extending the reach of IT into the business.

The ability to improve the state of technology boosted the status of some MIS directors. At Xerox Corp., for example, Strassmann was charged by the president with unifying the corporate picture, and that required the authority to wrest back central control.