One of the things covered in the recent Burton report was an instance where a new CIO was needed to get SOA going. Loraine Lawson does a good job covering the report, and the CIO angle in her recent post. "A new CIO coming on board during a business and IT reorganization often made the difference between SOA failure and SOA success, according to Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst with the Burton Group who recently st One of the things covered in the recent Burton report was an instance where a new CIO was needed to get SOA going. Loraine Lawson does a good job covering the report, and the CIO angle in her recent post. “A new CIO coming on board during a business and IT reorganization often made the difference between SOA failure and SOA success, according to Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst with the Burton Group who recently studied real-world SOA implementations.” I covered this report last week, as you may remember, as well as my podcast. The reality is that CIOs are very different animals from company to company. I’ve found them typically not to be technical, coming instead from the finance or operations side of the house. I’ve even found instances where CIO meant “career is over” and it was a holding position for executives who were about to retire or be outplaced. However, I’ve also found them to be masters around the business processes within their enterprise, and a good way to find your way around the politics, typically a part of any large company. Personally, I’ve been offered the role of CIO many times over the last 20 years within large organizations. I balked at the opportunities when I found out that the roles came with no real power, thus no real ability to drive change. As one executive put it: “Dave, all you need to do is to keep your head down for 20 years.” I passed. When considering SOA the role of the CIO is even more important. Someone needs to focus on the business processes and the culture, and good CIOs should be masters at doing that, and indeed their ability to do that leads to SOA success, according to Burton. However, most CIOs either can’t or won’t step up and make those changes in order to clear the way for SOA, thus SOA dies on the vine. CIOs hold a critical role when considering any change in IT, especially holistic changes required when doing SOA. If they can’t drive change, then perhaps you should change your CIO? Or, perhaps they are not empowered? Not just for SOA, but for the future health of your IT infrastructure. Software Development