娇色导航

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining us for the 2025 State of the 娇色导航survey results.

It's actually the 24th year that we've done the state of the 娇色导航survey, and it's wonderful to have this opportunity for this exclusive discussion, which is presented by CIO.com and the IDC 娇色导航Executive Council.

I'm really happy today to be joined by my colleague, Zach Miller, who is executive director of the IDC 娇色导航Executive Council, as well as two CEC member panelists, Devon Valencia, who's 娇色导航at CareSource and Satya Jayadev, who's VP and 娇色导航at Skyworks Solutions.

So I want to hear a little bit from each of them to tell us a little bit about what they do and their background. So why don't we start with you? Zach, Thank you, John. Pleasure to be here today.

As John mentioned, I work with the 娇色导航Executive Council, have the opportunity to work with folks like Devon and Satya and CIOs from across the United States and Canada and bring them together to be able to share best practices with one another, as well as work closely with our IDC analysts Here in the US, and really enjoy the opportunity I have to hear about all the innovation that's occurring across the companies that we work with.

Yeah, it's a great position, enviable position, Satya, tell us about yourself. This is the Jeopardy part. We say, tell us about yourself. Nice to meet you all. I'm, you know, Satya Jayadev, I'm the 娇色导航for Skyworks solutions. Skyworks is a high performance analog semiconductor organization.

Whenever you hear about wireless connectivity or 5g we probably have a product in there. So we operate in many different industries. Our products are powering the wireless revolution, as we call it.

It is, it is in the aerospace in in the cancer industry, in the infrastructure, all the way to the wearables market, wherever you see 5g or wireless connectivity. We have a product in there. Very good. Thanks, Satya and Devon. First.

Congratulations, Devon, in Dayton, Ohio, Ohio State University national champions in the buckeyes in the first 12 game playoffs. That's quite, quite a thing. So Devon, tell us about your role. Thanks, Chris, and thanks for having me. Similar to Satya, I'm the Chief Information Officer at care source.

So care source is a $13 billion managed care organization. So what does that mean? That means we do health insurance, and we are located in Dayton, Ohio. We are fast growing. I joined care source about five years ago, going on six.

We were in four states when I joined. We're now in 14, and so fast growing and we serve predominantly government, business, meaning healthcare coverage that comes from state agencies and CMS so Medicaid, Medicare, marketplace plans and then veterans, families and such.

So excited to be here and appreciate the CEC and all the research you all do to help us do our jobs. Great. Thanks. Thank you, Devon. So before we go into the questions for the panelists, I'm gonna be walking you through a few slides from the survey.

Really, this is just to get you acquainted with it. If you've not had any experience with the state of the 娇色导航survey. It's a big survey. It's over 1000 respondents.

Heads of it, most of them have the 娇色导航title, but there are a variety of other titles in there as well. The whole goal behind this research is to focus on how the role is changing. What are the priorities for CIOs today?

What are some of the challenges they're facing, and some of the technology projects and initiatives that are underway, and we'll be talking about those things as we go throughout our presentation today.

One of the nice things is we're always asking in our surveys at Foundry about@cio.com about budgets, so over the next 12 months, what's your expectation?

And the good news in this research, as well as most of the research that we're seeing recently, is budgets are going to be going up in the next 12 months, so that we can see that almost two thirds of the respondents said they expect their IT budget to increase in the next 12 months.

And we asked folks Why, what's driving those budget increases? And I won't go through all that.

I know that CEC members will be getting the full research results, but what I wanted to point out here is the number one answer is additional investments in AI and machine learning and other AI enriched products and services.

So both internal AI initiatives as well as technology that's being acquired that's AI enriched. So that really is the first area where I wanted to spend a little bit.

The time focusing on with the three of you I'd love to hear and Devon, let's start with you on this. What is your current approach to AI, I mean, we're hearing so much about it. Your organization has had a fair amount of experience with it, I know.

But what's the current approach? What are you hoping to achieve, and what kind of lessons have you learned along the way? Yeah, thanks for asking.

So AI is obviously top of mind for everybody, for everyone's C suite, for every organization, certainly our board of directors, I think for for us in technology, AI has been around for a very long time.

We've been I mean, my organization, lots of organizations, been working with some version of AI, whether it's bots or modeling or all sorts of things, for years and years, I think what we're seeing is two things.

One, it's consumer oriented now, so that that average person can touch AI with generative AI and ChatGPT as an example, and so you're seeing it more in the news.

But I actually think we're at a pivot point here, and we're having a lot of conversations with our board of directors and our C suite that we're kind of at a pivot point in, like the mid 90s, around e Commerce and the internet and things like that.

And there are parts of our industries, ways will work, ways the universe will work, that we probably can't even imagine right now. So we, our approach to AI is it's here to stay. It's not going away.

It's like saying, you know, hey, can we, can you put the calculator back and change math to an advocate, it's just never going to go away. Yeah.

So we have to, especially in an industry like healthcare, we have to embrace it and know how to use it, or also, Competitors will beat us to it.

I do think there's a lot of caution though, about how it's used, and I think so there's just a lot of learning. So we're aggressively using it.

We use it extensively already, particularly in our data and analytics and things like that, and also member facing activities, but we are being thoughtful, particularly when we're touching clinical outcomes and patients and providers and such, how we're very cautious about we just don't let that go by itself, right?

So there's a lot of human in the loop. Is what we really focus on? Makes a lot of sense. And Devon if you were to say in one sentence, what's the most important thing you've learned about AI so far? The most important, it's not going away.

It's not, it's not, it's not a temporary thing. It is a, it will be a pervasive part of how we work, and so it's going to be embedded in everything we do, yeah, generational shift in the technology. Sacha, what's what? What are your plans? What are your learnings?

What's your take on? Ai, at this point, yeah. So I think we, we've we've gone through that hype cycle, and now we are into a good space where we are trying to understand our use cases better.

In the advent of AI every nail looked like an AI nail because we had an AI hammer. But now we are starting to kind of sift all of that, and we're trying to understand what's what's a good use case for how we want to manage this.

And I think when we talk about AI, we have to start talking about data.

And we talk about data, you talk about the systems of records, systems of transactions, what generates that data for you to start thinking about AI in totality, in terms of what you're trying to do.

So I think from that perspective, we are now peeling the onion and we are looking at the different layers of what, what constitutes that? So which is in line with what you've had actually mentioned about when you spoke about it, budgets. Why are they increasing? Right?

So the reason why we're increasing is because AI, being the catalyst, is driving that single source of truth when it comes to data, and that single source of truth is also trying to modernize our systems, bring in more optimization, bring in those systems of records or transactions that are generating that so it is, it is operations, modernizations and and the transformation that is all driving The cost up to make sure that we deliver AI where the organization feels it and and sees it from that perspective.

So I agree, and I think Devon had some great points as well, in terms of AI is not going away. It's going to be here. It's there's a lot of investments coming through, and we're going to start seeing that in the next few years. That makes sense.

I also want to ask, you know if, if 2024 was the year of AI hype and sky high promises and lots of promotions and projections around that, what's your expectation of how 2025 will be remembered when it comes to AI? And actually, want to start with you.

Zach, we were chatting about this earlier, what when you when you think and talk across the CEC, what do you think 2025 will be remembered for? Yeah, well, we hear from members is that 2025 is the year of AI investment.

And in some cases, as Satya referenced, it's the it's the investment in preparing for AI. And then. Investment comes in large part around data strategy and data governance and cleaning up of tech debt. So really it is about AI investment.

And the other thing we hear from the members is that as they look at 2025 where there was a great deal of experimentation in 2024 they're now looking for use cases that have the greatest chance of success and business impact in their organization. That makes sense.

And Satya, what would you predict 2025 will be known for AI the year of I think we initially when, when AI came to the fore, right? We had a venture capitalist mindset to say, let's, let's put on eight to nine use cases. Let's see where we are.

Let's do some discovery. So we had some investments coming through, so a lot of the learning is now starting to crystallize. And now from VCs mindset, we're going to go into an ROI mindset. Give me those use cases that is now coming to like provision.

How is the company benefiting from that. The board is looking at that. The senior executives are looking at that, the feeling for what AI can do, whether it's a hype cycle or whether it is true.

And all of that is now pretty much crystallized, and we know what we can do with it. We know where we are with that.

And I think this is going to be a year when you're going to see some organizations drive that ROI towards the finish line, and that's what's going to happen. I believe in 2025 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I hear about that ROI issue from a lot of CIOs. It's been difficult, in many cases, to model that in advance of a pilot, and it's difficult afterwards to determine success. So that's a great topic to bring up.

Devon what will it be known 2025 the year of Yeah, I think it's I think you're going to see the some companies because they've made the right plays, both in their data platforms and in their engineering talent and their data science talent, they're going to pull away from the competition at a pace.

I think it's a little bit going to be unexpected. I worry a little bit that some companies that haven't aren't totally prepared, they're going to be a little bit lagging. So it's kind of a separation of the wheat from the chef.

I think you're going to see a huge acceleration in companies and spaces. And actually, I think you're going to start to see things like, what's in 90 what mid 90s? There's like 1000 new companies around the s, p, that didn't exist in the mid 90s.

So I think there's whole new companies, operating models, the emergence of ways of working that aren't even, I couldn't even explain what they are now, but I do think you're going to see, you're going to see a differentiation.

I think some companies are really going to take off very quickly because they have the right building blocks in place. And I think others are just going to try to be catching up a little bit. You know, it's interesting. We have a survey called AI priorities.

It looks exclusively at AI, and one of the questions is, do you think your organization is moving too quickly or too slowly? When it comes to AI, it's really split. I mean, it's almost a almost an even split.

But one person remarked that, I think for the people who think they're moving too quickly, they're one press release from a competitor away from realizing they're not moving anywhere quick, anywhere fast enough, when it comes to AI.

So I wanted to note this, this slide from the state of the 娇色导航survey, where it says 75% of CIOs are working more closely with line of business on AI applications, and 71% agree that it's the IT department that's driving AI adoption efforts and aligning with business units on that.

So we're going to talk more about the role, but I wanted specifically to ask, and I'll start with you, Devon, how is this focus and this urgency around AI? How is that alone changing the 娇色导航role today?

Um, yeah, I think you're moving to much more of a strategist role. I think there's because, because, again, they're not asking, Hey, I have this problem, and I've seen it solved and helped me solve it in by commercial software. The questions are, I think we can do this.

I don't know how. And so we're all like, it's problem solving in a very different way. It's not like known solutions.

And so I think it's it's changing maybe the conversation from a transactional I have this problem I know need to buy software and so help me pick it to I think I there's this emerging capability I want to build.

So it's a different conversation, which I think it's fun for us and also fun for our business partners, and I think it's changing the dialog between our organizations. Makes sense Satya, is that your is that your sense as well? Yeah, I agree.

I think, you know, Devon hit the nail on the head. We are for the for the first time. I feel like technology has no limitations in terms of what it can do.

And I think we're also starting to see the role of the 娇色导航change pretty, you know, significantly, right? We've, we've always had a good hold on technology that is running the business and moving the business forward.

We also have some great folks within it who can put on their business. Had and be very savvy about it. But now we are. This is a time where we can become very relevant or become very irrelevant in terms of how we see it.

We start only talking about data governance, right? It becomes very irrelevant. You gotta start talking about governance and the value like in a proposition as well. We've got to drive both these engines, you know, fast.

And I think that's where the you know, secret sauce is, how do you, how do you understand this?

How do you demystify this, to the board, and how do you, how do you demystify solutions to the to the you know, senior to the senior members of the, you know, executive team. All of that comes, all of the that becomes very, very very important.

I also feel that now it also has a great path towards adding to the top line growth of the company, which has always been a pipe dream for for many, right? And I think even in a manufacturing organization, you can see it now adding value through AI.

They are adding to the top line growth and to the bottom line growth of the company. Engineering systems are now being significantly changed because of what AI can do that helps with the productivity of engineers, and that also helps with your products getting out there much, much faster.

And you're now seeing the same thing from manufacturing efficiencies and all of that. So a very interesting time to be as a CIO.

I'm sure Devon will agree with me on that, and I think this is only going to get better as we start seeing some of these mainstream use cases come to life.

And I think that's where you are going to see that the IT organization is a significant value adder within the business, yeah, so let's stay on this. Go ahead, Devon Yeah, Chris, you know, I saw to use the word you said, demystified.

I think that's actually because AI is putting technology so close to like, every human, the things you can do with chat, DBT that used to have to ask somebody who's very tech savvy how to do these type of code something for you, because it's like, still low code it, it is in a really cool way, changing like my peers perspective.

It's so embedded in what they're doing. Like, automatically, I have a technology solution I need to solve for where it used to solve for where it used to be, like we were behind the wall.

You know, technology used to be like, Oh, that thing in the back office, and now they can see it and touch it. And so they're more apt to say, hey, like, let me talk to Devon about how we'd solve this, versus it being a purely business problem.

So I think it's changing their imagination and how they think about how we work together. Good. And I want to explore that.

We're really going to focus on the role here, because, as I mentioned, really at the heart of the state of the 娇色导航survey is the role of the CIO, which has changed dramatically over the 24 years of this survey.

So for example, we see here, 82% of CIOs say that the role is becoming primarily digital and innovation focused. 82% say they're leading digital transformation initiatives within their organization, and 81% agree that the 娇色导航is becoming a change maker.

And interestingly, we see we always ask, I think it's 250 line of business executives also fill out this survey because we want their perspective on how they're working with their own CIOs, and the effectiveness of the 娇色导航within their organization. Line of Business executives agree with these statements.

They're really looking at the 娇色导航to be a change maker. So Devon, let me start with you talking talk Overall, about how your role has changed and how you expect it to change.

I want to talk more about the interactions with the board and line of business and CEO in a second. But really, what you're telling your team about their role, what you see your role within the organization? How has it changed? And how do you expect it to change?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's, I used to be able to say, hey, you know, think about how you touch the member to my team. They can so clearly see how they touch our members and our and everybody in the organization.

There's just a it's a much clearer line of sight, because the technology is literally everywhere. It's not just in the back office like in the data center anymore. It's literally everywhere. So I think it is exciting for the people inside my team.

And I think the other like, there I I'm in so we're obviously fast growing both organically and inorganically. And I am in every deal conversation, because technology is native to, like, everything we're doing.

So, like, it's a competitive advantage for everything we're doing where it used to be sort of like, hey, well, let's talk about the cost structure of it. Structure of it. And so I think every organization is different, right?

So my CEO and my board is very aggressive about technology, so it makes my job fun. And not every company is like that, but I do think it's just changing where it used to be, sort of a functional role. It's certainly a strategist.

You know, new revenue opportunities, how are we doing growth and things like that. It's a, it's a big part of just the broader strategy. It's a sort of, it's a line that runs through all things. You know, I'm glad you used that word strategist.

One of the things that we asked the line of business executives is, how would you characterize your 娇色导航and. One of them. And really what we consider to be the ideal role is business strategist. And this year, that number increased significantly.

I mean, it's still, it's still under 60% of the line of business. Folks categorized their CEO, CIO, that way. But we're seeing good growth in this. I'm really glad you brought up that strategist term, Satya, how has your role changed?

And how do you envision it changing going forward? So the metamorphosis of the role is pretty fascinating about in my own experience, right? About eight years ago, it was a support function, right?

And from a from a support function, COVID became a catalyst, where it became an enablement engine, where we were trying to help the business run from wherever, however, whatever. So I think that was where it gained a lot of credibility, right?

A lot of leaders who thought it was a cost center started to look at it to say, Wow, these guys can kind of help us to run the business.

Maybe we give them more involved in these conversations, and then post COVID world, we became more of the drivers, because we were now at the idea eating table, and then we were giving our ideas, our views on how we need to shift and focus.

We were real solution shapers. From that perspective, again, a lot of credibility earned through the years. And then now, with the advent of AI, we are seen as a visionary organization.

How do you guys come and and enable us to kind of, kind of like, you know, get there so, you know, you have to kind of show them the utopia of what AI can do when you when you talk about, when you talk to a CEO, or, you know, how do you envision your day?

What are you doing when you come in, when you get into your when you look at your like in a system? What are those things that are on your mind? Do you want to know? Where are we on these design ones, right?

Where are we on these orders, and how are we going to get are we attaining our like a schedule? Are we doing all of that through just natural language? You don't need to log into 15 different systems to get you the answer that you that you're looking at.

So, so that's the parrot and, and that's why I use the term demystifying officers. Is because we need to kind of demystify these systems.

Take away all those three letter acronyms of, you know, systems that are, that are, that are changing and, you know, shifting our world to saying, What do you want, asking in natural language?

Well, we will get there at some point, but we need to know where we're getting towards, right?

And I think that's where you work backwards to say, how do I get them if we need to know a lot information, how do I get that lot information to to the to the exact in a very simple format, right?

And that's where the, you know, secret sauce likes. And I can, I can imagine how this, this role of the CIO, is going to change over a period of time. I like the term, like, you know, strategist, right? And I think that's and Devon is right.

And I think we are seen more as people who understand the business and technology, and how do we bring that to the business, and how do we build the value over a period of time?

Yeah, SaaS, I have to say that we did cio.com we did several surveys during the pandemic and post pandemic, and you're right, remarkable change in the perception of the 娇色导航role as someone who enabled the company to either thrive or survive during that typical period.

And I think AI is having that same kind of effect of driving those conversations, enabling those conversations, but let's talk about those conversations. Talk about how your relationships with the CEO, the board and business peers have changed.

And I know I'm gonna ask you about this, Zach, as you talk again with all of the members of the CEC How do you see those relationships changing? Yeah, first, I'll just step back, and I think you feel it here, and we feel it within the council.

The energy level among the CIOs we work with is very high.

They their profile within their organization is on the rise, and they know they have the opportunity to impact the business in meaningful ways, and that lends itself to the time that they're spending with the board and within the C suite really helping to develop strategy that's driving the companies forward.

So we see and feel it every day. As we visit with CIOs, there being a lots being asked of them, but it's, it's an opportunity to really bring their expertise forward and have an impact on the business. Yeah. And then Sacha, what's your take on that?

How are these discussions and relationships changing?

Yeah, I think, as I mentioned, it's the the energy level is high for different members of our own executive team too, as they as they look at this and they're trying to understand, what can we do, how can we use it in my own line of business, like we are trying to think about very innovative ways of doing it, the age of those low hanging.

Fruits that came with AI are all taken now. Everybody wanted to take advantage of, how do we generate code, and how do we use copilot or something to kind of write our emails?

How do we all of that is gone like we have what we've all taken advantage of all that. But now it comes down to the real meat of it, to say, how do we make our process much more faster, much more optimal.

Can we look at it in a in a variety of of different functions, right?

And I think just being involved in those discussions, just being asked to be at the ideating table, whether it is at the highest level or whether it is within the individual functions, is where, you know, it really warms our heart to see how much the fabric of it is kind of intertwined with with many different functions of the business.

And I think, but we've got to be very careful. We can't boil the ocean, right? We need to understand the prioritization of it, the democratization of data, the democratization of analytics, and now the democratization of AI is coming to the fore.

Devon mentioned about getting those, the rise of data scientists and the citizen, you know, development that's happening. And I think it has to be very careful about building governance models that is that is going to help make these processes faster.

So I think there's a there's a lot of pull in different areas.

It's always great to be wanted, but I think you have to deliver in order for that to be a very fruitful relationship, to continue and build on and Kevin, I want to get your take on something that you said struck me.

You talked about there's an educational component of this, like, particularly around AI, and I've heard this from other CIOs, where they have, you know, line of business coming saying, Do we have an AI, or can you get us an AI?

And, you know, there's a lot of education that they're having to do around not only AI, but around risk and security and other things. So how are your conversations with CEO board, line of business peers? How are they changing?

Well, I think one of the things I embraced a few years ago in kind of pre COVID, was when I introduced myself, I say, first, Hey, I've been in managed care for 23 years. I happen to have been playing an IT role those whole 23 years.

So I think you have to really know the business you're in. And then, luckily, I happen to really and deeply understand technology, like it just a bonus. I think, I think you have to come at it from that lens.

Because if you start with technology first, it's like a mystifying language, like, so Satya was saying, like, how do you demystify all this? It needs to be in natural business terms.

We talk a lot about, you know, these acronyms and technology and even the sort of like, all the different types of AI, you know, generative machine learning, all these different things.

Even go fi, all these things, it can be very confusing, and you have to simplify it because it's very accessible. And so I try to just, I try to just say, Hey, first, let's talk about the business what the business problem?

And then, oh, by the way, I'll explain this in the back if you want to. I'll draw a picture for you if you want. But let's talk about the business problem. And so I think you have to keep it there.

You can get, like with any technology, you can get really in the weeds. And when you're talking to a CEO on a board, they trust that Satya and I know how to do this. That's not their job.

But what can you do in the possibility, I think you gotta keep it there. So I you gotta know the business really well.

So you have to have credibility in the business you're in, then also deeply know technology in the same way, like my CFO, deeply knows the business we're in, and he's really good at actuary and financials, right? It's for his physical career.

So, yeah, one of the themes that's come up in other discussions is this notion of proactivity. So instead of waiting to be asked, what can you do?

It's also bringing ideas to the table and bringing solutions in advance, which really requires, as you say, knowing the business and knowing the market and the wider economy.

So for the first time this year, in our state of the 娇色导航survey, we asked some questions about stress and burnout and job satisfaction.

So I just want to run quickly through some of the findings of that when we asked about 娇色导航burnout, like, how burned out do you feel in your job? We had a significant number.

Over almost a third of the respondents who were in the very high ranges of that on a scale of 10, they were eight, nines or 10s.

So then when we asked about their stress level in that same category of eight, nine and 10 on that scale, with 10 being I am extremely stressed out, which I feel in a lot of my life. But separate, we had even more people.

We had close to 40% of the respondents were in those highest levels of that. And what was more concerning, when we asked line of business executives, what's the impact of that?

We had 67% of them, two thirds of them, saying that that stress has either somewhat hindered progress, meaning missed deadlines or project failures, or significantly hindered the success of projects or meeting deadlines. So I'm going to start. I'm gonna start with you, Devon, did these numbers surprise you?

These stress and burnout numbers a little bit, maybe not so much. And I think there's also the correlate. There's another question in there about like, and sorry to skip ahead, but like, Do you love your job?

And everyone said, Yes, I was gonna get to that too, but you can tackle that right away. It's sort of and I'll show our audience.

You could see again on that eight, nine and 10 scale we really had, I mean, close to 50% of respondents said, I love my job. So how do these, how do these things sync up?

I don't, I don't know the I mean, for me, I think one of the things, maybe it says pivot from like functional expert to strategist. I think it is really complicated. Everything from like end user compute, the software on the network, that everything is running in technology.

So the expansiveness of the job and the disciplines under it is just ever expanding. And then within that, everything, including the network, the data center, everything is evolving at like, a quarterly pace that it used to be. Hey, I'd upgrade something in a, you know, 1824, month cycle.

I mean, Microsoft Teams is patching and doing feature points at like, every other week. I mean, the pace of the acceleration of it. So it's like the moment you believe you're expert in it. You're actually already antiquated. You have to learn something new.

And so then I think then maybe many of us as having had been sort of in that control, functional role, pivoting to this role where, like, your honest answer has to be. I actually have no idea how that's going to work, but I'm going to figure it out.

Maybe that's an uncomfortable transition, and I think it requires a lot of resilience. It requires a lot of risk taking and sort of like, how do you how do you create an environment around yourself, with your team, with your peers, of curiosity and questioning, instead of perfection?

Because there's no version of that anymore. I mean, the pace of technology, and every component of technology, is a lightning fast speed. So I'm wondering if it's just that pivot of like, the expectation of being expert systems all have to be up and available 100% of the time.

Like, there's no more 99 it's five nines for everybody, for all things, and then the pacing of it, the modernization, the security and everything on top of it.

So I'm just wondering if it's that, it's that tension point between the two of that expert and then become a strategist. Means you're not expert. There's no such thing as expert, because you're going into new worlds that don't even exist. Yeah.

And Satya, what's your take on this stress level, this burnout level, Does this surprise you? Especially concerning, I think, is the line of business responses that it's having an effect on the performance. No, I think, I think Devon had all the key notes there.

It is a very interesting time, but it's also a time where we've got to pace ourselves and we I think we need to understand, I think AI is, is a part of that equation.

AI might be the catalyst in that but, but then you've got to think about it holistically. Devon mentioned about looking at our data centers, looking at our cloud portfolio, looking at our network. Because if you go it's like you have a Ferrari.

You need to make sure there are, I mean, you need to put the right roads to kind of get us there. You need to put the right guardrail so if this doesn't crash. You need to know how to drive this car.

You need to make sure that the car is taken care of. There's so many other things that we need to understand.

Because, again, when we talk about AI, we talk about data, we talk about the systems, and we also have to operate the three speed architecture, RIGHT THERE IS IT operations, day to day operations, and then there is the modernization of our applications, of our systems, which is a continuous process.

Now, just a few years ago, we used to talk about technical debt, and now nobody talks about technical debt. Everybody talks about AI.

We still have to address the technical debt, because we're going to tell the age of AI, yeah, in, the age of AI, garbage in, is garbage out squared, right?

So we need to make sure that we have a good path to making sure that our systems are good, clean, the data is sanitized. That is a single source of truth.

And then when we go to the Data Layer, how do you harness this data, the Knowledge Graph around all of that? And then you start talking about data now that is agentic AI models coming out there.

And so we needed to think about the interoperability of these agentic models. And then you have to, you have to think about the business layer to say what works for us. So we have to base ourselves, right?

I think there are, I heard that there are about 30,000 startups in AI. We've got to start thinking about not making everything ourselves. Have to start looking at what's available out there. We don't have to reinvent the engine.

We can be the ones that are, that are that are using those to where it should be. So I think it's about pacing ourselves. And there is definitely a feeling of burnout.

And I think no matter what you do, the finish line seems to be going forward a few more steps. So I think that's where it. It is something that we'll have to understand. We'll have to learn.

And maybe, you know, Devon, will agree all us, all of us will have to start becoming more healthier, get our yearly like a physical checkups, and make sure that we are there for the for the long haul.

Well, I have to say, You two seem very happy in your job, so I'm glad. But it just, it really strikes me. And again, Devon, I just touched back in terms of stressed out, burned out, love my job, yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't. I'm not an expert in our psychology. I do think it to run an organization and to be part of a C suite is it's stressful. Those jobs are, I mean, they're burner, right? They're burner jobs.

So self care, giving yourself some grace, taking your health, I think the other thing, and I'm an expert in this, but in this, but I was thinking a lot about these, this coming into this interview, there's some military studies that said stress really so they equate stress to lonely, yeah, and so, like, I you know, so how do we create communities in our teams at a C suite level, how do you create a community?

Because when you're stressed out, you just feel like you're isolated, right? That's the isolated, right? That's what that feels like, you're alone, you don't know how to solve the problem.

So I, I deeply believe in sort of community and culture and both at a 娇色导航peer level, but within the companies we're in. And, yeah, I don't know, just be nice. Just be nice to each other, too. That's a great jumping off point.

I wanted to add, I wanted to talk to you about that. Within the survey, we asked you have lots of goals. There's lots of things as a 娇色导航you want to achieve and you want your team to achieve.

But we ask, What's holding you back from being able to achieve those goals?

Variety of things, but the number one answer is staff and skills shortages, and we have seen this in a variety of surveys, whether it comes to AI, security cloud, the changing nature of the staff, the skills we don't have in order to move these kinds of initiatives forward, the challenge of keeping good people.

So let's talk about these issues. And Devon, I'll start with you, because you brought this up.

How, how are you managing the challenge of finding training, keeping people not just the roles that you already have, but all the roles you're going to need for these new initiatives like AI, like edge, IoT, pick your, you know, pick your, your cool new thing going forward, it's probably the people side and the culture and the talent is probably the thing I spend my most time on.

Yeah. I mean, you know exactly. I mean, I'm competing, you know, I'm competing for talent at a national level and a global level even. And I mean, I'm competing against 100 billion dollar companies, best talent.

So you have to be a place where people are dying to work for you, and feel like they have opportunity and career growth and that it's fun, right?

So there's, it's a big deal, and I think going that correlation to the stress part, when I'm super stressed out, I'm not a lot of fun to be around. I don't really create a good energy in the organization.

So I think that, like self reg as a leader, as the top leader in the IT organization, as we compete for talent, that ripple of your vibe, or feeling of stress or happiness, or whatever it is or optimism, flows through the organizations.

I think it's really spending time at an individual level, like what, what are your people feeling when they're around you?

And it changes the shape of the team and the dynamic, and whether people are willing to take risks or not, right, if they feel like they're gonna be penalized or whatever, it's a tough place to have innovation and Devon, I wanna, I wanna press you on this.

So when you talk about culture, what is it you do specifically that makes this culture that you value so much? It's a lot of things. So I talked to my people. I just would just, would just, I do round tables all the time.

I talk to people i i try to just like model, like what it is to be nice and kind and like, be good to people.

We spend a lot of time on, what do we expect people to do and be, and how do we expect them to be innovative? And we're kind of relentless on our we use the concept, it's a little controversial, of talent density.

What do we really think about who's our very best talent?

It's just, it's kind of a, it's an constant conversation of communication and teaching, and it's like in everything we do, and I expect my staff, and we don't, and we kind of have a, you know, a no blip role, but we don't let bad people in.

And then you just, you can make that and you got to, have to hold the line. Oh, now I know what the blip is. It just figured, took me a little bit to figure it out, but now I know what it is. Yeah.

Satya, how are you managing this? This again, this comes up in every survey we do. I think it's, I mean, from a from a culture perspective, it's all about trying to instill what's in it for my team members, right?

What's in it for them before, what's in it for the organization. The bigger picture, again, working on some very cool technologies, working on technologies that is, that is having a direct impact on our business, is a huge thing, right? I think it's, it's the folks that are.

That are doing this are actually going to see the impact of what they did. And I think seeing that is hugely inspirational. And I think that's where the role lies in trying to tell them to say, you got a friend. Seat.

Drive this towards, towards where it should be, and you are, you will see the impact of what you're trying to do as well.

So sometimes I feel that the I in the 娇色导航stands for inspiration to make sure that we are the ones that are trying to kind of help the organization see what it is.

And I think it's also about coming back to the other question, which is, what are we trying to do to make sure that we have the talent that's that's definitely a huge challenge, right?

Some of the reasons why there is stress and burnout is also because of the talent that we have been thinking about, how do we bring the right talent? How do we because I don't want it to become the choke point for the business.

We don't want to be strong arming the business strategy. We want to be doing everything that we can to kind of keep this thing going, which means there's going to be a lot of resources that is going to be required to kind of drive this forward.

And I think, how do we get those, those resources, and that's where you start looking at the entire ecosystem. Where can you co develop with your with your vendor partners? Can you co develop with your customers? Can you co develop obviously, within the organization?

Can we create an entrepreneurial ventures? Can we, what can we do to kind of spur all of that so that we can keep this thing, this, you know, Juggernaut rolling, rather than stalling, is where we spend a lot of time. And how do you re skill?

How do you retrain? And how do you keep the employees, if you re skilled, and retrain too. So it's a concoction of many different things that has to come together and successful CIOs do that.

One last thing I'll talk about is that it is also looking at the paradigm change in which we are operating, right?

I think we have to start looking at certain areas of it which is adding value, which is making us more competitive, and looking at certain areas of it which is basically commodity. Everybody does that, right?

Everybody manages backups, but we can be thinking about that as something we need to we need to start thinking about giving it to somebody who can do it better, and start focusing on areas which is going to add more competitive or more make us more competitive in the business place.

And I think that's where we have to start thinking about talent holistically, right? That makes sense. I do think you have a line of T shirts and coffee mugs with Chief inspiration officer. I love that.

I think you can only you might want to trademark that before we get off. Zach, I'd love to hear about what you hear from the CEC about this issue of staffing, and then I get your take. But I also want to hear from Devon and Satya about it.

How do you think AI is going to change that? So AI has uses within it as well. So first, what are you hearing from CEC members about?

Well, CDC members definitely concur that staffing is at or near the top of the list in terms of the challenge that they're faced with we spend a lot of time as a council trying to brainstorm and share best practices around how to overcome some of those challenges on the AI side of the equation.

Interestingly, as we look at the AI use cases that have been most successful in the past year within the council, there's been numerous use cases shared where our members have leaned into AI to automate tasks, and really have done so, not only within it, but across lines of business to help address the shortage of of talent that's out there by being able to free up time of their current staff, who maybe is in a great position to focus on innovation and allow them to, you know, focus on those higher value activities versus the tasks that makes sense.

And Satya, we're coming up on our time pretty quickly. We have about 10 minutes left. I do want to get a quick take from you and from Devon on, how do you see AI changing the game and how your team works.

We talk about it a lot about the rest of the business, but how's it changing it? Yeah, I think we will get more and more into an AI driven process, or into an AI driven process.

I think we we've got to start thinking about the silos within the within the IT organization, and start looking at AI as something that's going to unify things.

I mean, within the even like running the IT organization is going to involve a lot of AI to kind of do this, especially in the, you know, service management space, I think we are starting to understand, acknowledge that generating code is something that we, we've kind of embraced.

Well, that was a good test to see if, if AI are also people who can accept changes and embrace change. I think this is something we've got to start thinking a whole lot more. How do we, how do we simplify systems? Right?

Those are very those are also very important for my team members to. Understand this. If we're going to be driving this within the organization, we better start living that day in and day out, and that's going to be how I see this moving forward. Makes sense.

Devon any thoughts on this? Yeah. I mean, I imagine a new world where everybody in every organization is a technologist, meaning, like, there's no I just spent time with the founder who's building like you can build apps and websites and APIs with drag and drop.

You should be able to do that. I mean, I need to give my business partners a platform that's secure and stable and there's a promotion path for testing and things like that. But why don't they manage their own business rules?

Why aren't I mean, I don't ever want to write a report again. I those things are run a job, those like so I think one of the beauties of AI is it puts the tech. It puts technology in the hands of everyone.

You don't have to be a deep technology expert. And then one of the technology people, their imagination run wild, because they aren't consumed with things like back end jobs and backups and things like that. They can do really creative stuff.

So I just, I just think it's makes technology more pervasive and makes everyone in tech, everybody should be in it. Yeah, empower everyone. So we again, we don't have much time, and I have two big topics that I want to ask you both about.

Sort of unfair to tackle these big topics in a short period of time. But when we ask CIOs what I mentioned earlier this slide, where we ask them what they're focusing on today. One of the big areas is this issue of modernizing infrastructure and applications.

And to that, I would add modernizing the way we develop applications and modernizing security. So how are you wrestling with that? You talked about technical debt, Satya, and I'll start with you.

This is a huge thing, and it's behind the scenes, and it's tough to get funding for, and it's tough to get people excited about, how are you navigating modernization and getting getting past that technical debt?

I think again, it comes down to to kind of explaining the the whole enchilada in terms of saying, AI, data systems, processes, so we have to get them the whole picture there and and kind of walk them through the whole process too.

And I'll tell you one area where technology is breaking silos within the business, right? Because when we look at the single source of truth, for example, when you talk about cost models, you're going to say, Okay, where is the data from a cost model coming from?

You ask the business, and each one has a different call, a different area from where they are pulling their their cost models, and that's where you're saying, well, I need to start thinking about my data lake.

And for my data lake, I need to populate that with the single source of truth. So let's get together. Let's have the discussion. Let's think about the process. Let's harmonize that and look at that single source of truth. So that's where you see that discussion coming towards that.

And then when you identify that there are gaps which need, which is a cause of a technical debt, you start fixing those.

And then when you fix those, that has a direct impact on the results that that you will see on your, you know, AI processes or AI system.

So I think you've got to kind of, you know, like, you know, walk them through the the entire journey to to make sure that that is there's a lot of importance in investing in the right systems and building or harmonizing the processes as you go through the process, which will reflect in your data.

And I will mention this again, garbage in is garbage out squared. So keep that in mind when you start thinking about AI and data. Yeah, I think there's another coffee mug and T shirt in that garbage in garbage out square. So many of these.

I have to Yeah, you've got something going on here. Devon, how are you tackling this issue of modernization in terms of what's working for you? What advice do you have for others?

You know, we've instituted for a very long time, and even in my prior roles at a very structured n minus one and all the way up to the board of directors.

And when I say everything's n minus one, or as much as it can be, right, without disrupting the business, I think it gets it's really hard. It's like having a car and you choose not to change the tire, then you keep driving.

At some point it's going to break and that catch up when that tire blows, and then you have to replace not just the tire, but the rim, and then the whole and the whole chassis, the expense of that.

So storytelling to your board and your CFO to make sure that that funding is always available.

And it's not a discretionary topic, because once you get behind the curve, and I think this is even true, especially with on the, you know, the emergence of AI, those companies that can stay modern and stable if you're, if you're replacing, like, your integration framework, or even a mainframe, mainframe AI doesn't run on a mainframe, it doesn't run like you can't so like you're, you're, you're starting to make these, like, very difficult choices.

But if you, if you get behind, it's tricky to catch up. So I just think every 娇色导航has got to convince your board, CFO CEO, you have to have an n minus one, kind of a strategy where it's just part of your day to day.

It's like taking out the trash. Yeah, I talked to one 娇色导航who said, Just tell them that it's, it's out of security and it has to be fixed, because it's you could do that too. Yeah, the security problem.

And again, I apologize because this is a big topic, but I think it's not mentioned specifically in the survey. But I think it's so important right now.

In a meeting with another group of CIOs, one of them said, one of the challenges that we have is the world that we're in right now is the world order that we all grew up in is dissolving.

We have wars in the Middle East, wars in Europe, global tensions. We've got just so much change, and things that we took for granted, 357, years ago are different these days. Even a new administration here, there'll be changes associated with that.

How are you as CIOs, helping your organizations navigate this world of rapid change, rapid uncertainty, where it's different than it was just a few short years ago, Devon, let me start with you, and we'll wrap up with SaaS on this.

Yeah, I think it's hardly you got to pay attention to what's actually happening. There's a lot going on in the world and then you have to, for me, I try to step back and say, Well, where are we globally?

I mean, because these, these amazing things are still happening. So every human protein, because of generative AI is now mapped, and the ability to solve diseases literally give immunization.

It's at a pace and our imagination, the things we can do with medicine alone just because of AI are astounding and will change the course of history and humanity. So yes, I mean, humans are still humans. We all are.

Do some silly stuff, and I think we'll continue to do that stuff.

I do think the possibility of humanity is still on a positive trend, and I think it's our obligation, particularly as leaders of technology, to do good with what we have, and the accountability we have and the roles we play is to do good with the technology.

So well, you are very optimistic. And just let me ask, in terms of philosophy, I know in the past, it was all about speed and moving forward quickly, have we shifted away from speed to resiliency? No, I think so.

I think it's a band like, it's just a pile on, it's a little bit stress level. It's, it's, everything is additive. You cannot slow down. It's, and that's right. I mean, yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. SaaS, what's your take on this? It's a new world changing.

So my speed on this, yeah, my one minute speed on this is that, I think we've got to give the business the agility that it needs. We got to be lean and nimble.

Systems have got to be more resilient because of the fact that there are so much uncertainty. Things could change within a span of hours, days, these days, right?

I think we as the business depends more and more on technology, more and more on tools to kind of drive everything. We've got to start thinking about resiliency within the IT organization as something that's very for the organization, as something that's very that is paramount.

If you think about what, what would happen if some parts of our systems don't work today, it could be catastrophic, and it could affect our revenues, could affect operations.

So we've got whenever, when we think of new technologies, we've got to think resiliency also as a part of that, and that's one of the reasons why, within my own organization, I have resiliency as one of those functions that's constantly thinking about, what are you doing for this if you're going to be building a new AI model?

If this doesn't work, what happens? What's the alternate? We've got to start thinking about that. And because there's so much happening, so much uncertainty, so much dependency. We are dependent on our partners, and our partners are dependent on so many other partners.

So we are in a in a huge year, like, you know, a, you know, supply chain based model that is, that is going to run all that. So definitely think about agility, being lean, nimble.

How do we make sure that we continue to survive and we continue to thrive? When, when, when, when? Some catastrophic answers. I think that's very important.

You know, in advance of this discussion, I told folks that it was going to be a great conversation with some really smart people. It's a great part of my job is that I get to talk to people who are a lot smarter than me.

But today, I was right. It was a great conversation with some really smart people, and I'm really pleased to have been a part of it. Thank you so much. Thanks Satya, Dev and Zach, great insights, terrific conversation.

I also want to thank my colleagues behind the scenes, Holly McWalter of Foundry and Robin Clausen of the CEC, for making this research and discussion happen. They were invaluable in driving this forward. I had the easy part.

They did a lot of the legwork and a lot of the leading up to the research and preparation. So thanks very much to them. I also want to thank our video team, great group of people to work with who always make these things come off smoothly.

Most of all, thank you all for joining and making time for us today, whenever you're watching this. Hope you found it valuable. Hope you found the information useful for cio.com I'm John Gallant.