Mass cloud adoption may threaten CIO job

Of the 203 CFOs and finance directors who participated in the January survey, part of a report titled "The Changing Role of the CFO," just released by Getronics UK, another 43% say that the CIO's role eventually will be subsumed within finance. Further, 31% believe those in a CIO role will be coming from a non-technical background in the future. Getronics is a consultancy that is part of KPN, the Dutch telecommunications provider.

Generally, the reason for such dynamic predictions seems to involve the changing way businesses purchase and consume IT -- especially because of the increasing importance of utility-based and cloud computing, in which IT services are rented out on a pay-per-use model, rather than purchased and installed outright.

What CIOs Don't Know About Finance

In a wide-ranging series of other results --- all from financial decision-makers with UK companies having at least 1,000 employees --- respondents also show, among other things, a low opinion of how much CIOs know about finance. For example, 38% say CIOs have less than a good level of financial understanding. And, remarkably, 40% say that their own CIOs need a greater understanding of IT itself.

"Compounding this lack of understanding of both roles," Getronics said its press release about the study, "more than half (56%) of the CFOs and financial directors surveyed believe that a lack of integration between finance and IT limits the impact on cost savings achievable from IT projects within their business."

The findings suggest strongly that more integration is needed between the two departments --- and 48% of those polled said such closer integration is already taking place at their companies. (On the other hand, a decrease in such integration moves was cited at 35% of the businesses.)