FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
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rest of the C-Suite of what changes are
possible or not with the systems the business
currently has.
CIOs should not be viewed as barriers to
progress, but rather as integral parts of the
business. When a new product, service or
division is launched, or the company wants
to make a change to any sales or operations
technical strategy, the CIO should by default
be a part of the process to mitigate the risk
to systems.
If more companies embrace a culture of
openness among the C-Suite they will likely
find that their CIO is potentially an enabler –
and not an inhibitor – in driving the business
forward. More critical though, is for the CIO to
have a vision of what the business needs and
how cloud can future proof the business. n
Autonomous IT brings
a tidal wave of change
Niral Patel, MD and
Technology Leader for
Oracle South Africa, says,
with the Fourth Industrial
Revolution upon us, it is
imperative for business
leaders to ensure their
organisations are future-
ready and that they reskill
their workers for the tidal
wave of change.
T
he time is now for local businesses
to turn to autonomous technology
to lower cost, improve efficiency,
and be more competitive – all key
business fundamentals.
According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda
Survey, the role of the CIO in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa is changing. CIOs in
40
INTELLIGENTCIO
this region are spending more time focused
on business leadership and becoming more
open minded, showing a greater capacity
for change. In South Africa, there is a new
appreciation for business leadership and a
clear understanding that it is critical to drive
collective action.
develop and secure its core IT systems.
Instead, AI and automation will work
together to manage everything from
database to application development and
provide actionable insight around business
processes, all without human input.
Closing the skills gap
To keep pace, the most forward-looking CIOs
will need to capitalise on autonomous services.
What are autonomous services?
Today, autonomous represents a new
category of cloud services; empowering
businesses to lower costs, reduce risk, go
beyond predictive insights to suggested
action and steer innovation into the fast
lane. Offering unprecedented levels of
simplicity, self-service and security, through
being self-driving, self-securing and self-
repairing, autonomous cloud services are
setting a new industry standard for IT. The
resulting ‘autonomous enterprise’ won’t
need people to run, maintain, integrate,
Keeping our region’s youthful population
in mind and the need to create jobs,
businesses should do their part to skill the
workforce for the world of tomorrow. At
Oracle, we prepare young South Africans
for employment in the ICT sector through
our Oracle Graduate Leadership Programme
that equips them with specialised IT and
leadership skills. To date, 84 students have
successfully completed the programme since
its inception in 2014.
Looking at it from a people perspective,
companies must ensure their employees
are ready for an autonomous cloud
technology-driven environment and
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