So odds are if you read this blog you are either a CIO or you aspire to become one, and in either case, the recent series of articles over at Information Week by bob evans, titled and themed "Are CIOs Disappearing?" should be of considerable interest to you.

Starting off with a quick search of a dozen global corporations, Evans was surprised to find that seven of the twelve didn't publish any information whatsoever regarding their CIO, although most made plenty of information available about their executive teams in general.

His second article mostly articulates reader responses that run the predictable gamut of "Yeah, they're worthless and going away" to "They're there, but as usual everyone ignores them," none of which seem particularly persuasive (although any of which I could see being the case at any given individual corporation).

Finally, Evans gets to the interesting bit in his third article: the actual prospects for the role of CIO in the future plans of corporate America.

Those prospects? According to Evans, dim at best. And I happen to agree with him. See why after the jump.

I'll let you read his articles for the logic Evans puts behind it, but I believe it's simply the ultimate destination of most technological endeavors-a complete assimilation into the fabric of the organization, as the technology becomes better adapted and easier to use than the pioneering iterations of it (which are what we have seen over the past forty years or so). Nick Carr's vision of the end of corporate computing (Nick do like the inflammatory titles, don't he?) seems, if not inevitable, at least very likely for most businesses given current industry trends.

There are some who would argue that modern Information Technology is a sort of neverending story when it comes to innovation and progress, who believe that the perpetual march of Moore's Law goes on to infinity and that the implications of this are that IT will never be so settled that it will not require specialists to implement at the business strategy/technology interface. But although some people see the industry as becoming only more complex,
I believe in fact it's becoming simpler and easier for the end-user to directly harness the potential of PC processing power. After all, if it were so clear that technology is and is going to be complex, at least from a technical standpoint, who would be seriously worried (as many CIOs are) about users bypassing them and usurping their role of the IT department as solution provider? And if this is the case, then really, why SHOULD there be a CIO position in the organization?

I've long argued that IT should fall under Operations in most organizations (traditionally, it tends to evolve under Accounting before it breaks out into its own function, if it ever does)-the roles are similar, only the degree of specialization tends to vary. Now, that specialization is largely becoming outsourced or becoming less technical and more process-related in nature. In such circumstances, organizations have every incentive to eliminate IT departments as such and re-envision the role of technology procurement and deployment as one of Operations, using specialists and outsourcing arrangements to manage IT as a series of building blocks laid down over a relatively stable Service Oriented Architecture (itself probably designed and managed by outside vendors), avoiding the complications and intricacies which have plagued the field thus far.

CIOs aren't generally helping their cause any by being obstreperous about the facts. Locking out Web 2.0 technologies, turning SOA implementations into doomed mega-projects, avoiding SaaS because "we need to keep those functions in-house" and generally trying to make things more complicated than they need to be, are only tactics which are going to turn CEOs on to other solutions that much faster.

Though simple Aristotelian logic might dictate that one remove oneself as far as possible from the agency of one's demise, I think that the only way out for CIOs is forward. The only way to avoid becoming obsolete and being replaced by conventional management is to take the lead in becoming that conventional management. Show interest and insight into the organization and it's core business processes. Become valuable as a source of strategic, rather than simply technical, advice. Parlay your greater understanding of the capabilities and pitfalls of modern technology into more keen implementations of processes than your colleagues or competitors. Become, in short, the type of executive that may well replace you.

I don't pretend this is going to happen tomorrow, either scenario-I'm still amazed, actually, that there is as much demand for IT professionals as their is, given the availability of outsourced providers and far simpler toolsets than ever before. That's inertia for you and I think it will provide most organizations with a vestigial IT department and CIO for quite some time after they could go without. But that time is coming.