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CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICERS from leading businesses on the demand-side of Information Technology across Europe, unite under an Association banner to ensure the European Commission’s Consultation on Cloud Computing reflects larger businesses concerns over security, global harmonisation, accountability and vendor behaviour. A new Association for CIOs across Europe, called the European CIO Association, (AISBL) has been launched to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union.
Headquartered in Brussels to increase its access to European institutions, the not-for-profit Association will be operational across seven countries and is designed to support the work of Chief Information Officers in larger international businesses through information exchange, meetings and senior level professional development services. The European CIO Association will also represent the collective views and suggestions of CIOs and large corporate users of IT services to governments and the supply-side vendor communities at EU level.
This new body is the only body with a proven record capable of acting as a single voice of Corporate IT across the whole EU Region. CIOs from member organisations of the Corporate IT Forum, an independent body that brings together practitioners from over 320 of the UKs leading organisations, will get access to the benefits and services offered by the Association. The purpose of the Association is to ensure the voice of the demand-side of business is properly balanced against the voices from the supply community. This will ensure businesses and consequently the European economy
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www.dcseurope.info European CIO association to launch
benefits. The use and application of Information Technology by businesses is helping reduce costs, maintain competitive advantage and aid economic recovery. Business dependency on IT is now critical for the smooth functioning of ever-more complex processes and meeting customers’ ever-increasing expectations for quality products and instant services.
The Association’s remit was developed from discussions and ideas floated by CIOs at a number of pan-European CIO events where they expressed the desire for a more international and professionally managed service operating in a relaxed and non- competitive environment, created by CIOs for CIOs to enable them to exchange information and ideas about common challenges on a continuing basis.
Generally, European CIOs feel that existing professional networks are US centric and steered by IT vendors’ view of the world. This highlighted the need to develop a forum with a truly European business and vendor independent position on IT issues. A critical issue for European based CIOs and businesses is the requirement for a single powerful voice to Governments about technology and its use to ensure EU governmental developments and legislation properly reflect the views and needs of European business and markets. Over 400 CIOs will participate as founder members. Essential to the operational structure of The European CIO Association are its seven country based membership service centres responsible for facilitating delivery of materials and collation of comments.
Launching with seven countries will bring the total number of CIO level participants to several hundred more and give the European CIO Association a strong and authoritative voice. This body will enable the full and proper representation to corporate IT business teams throughout Europe dependant on IT for their commercial success.
Companies taking longer to make business critical decisions
MORE than a third (39 per cent) of all European businesses are taking longer than ever to reach business critical decisions, according to research carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) announced today. Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a leading software provider that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive, commissioned the research to demonstrate the extent to which the pace of change and the complexity of the environments that businesses are operating in is impacting on their ability to perform effectively.
The study was conducted by surveying 150 European executives, approximately half of whom were C-level executives, and found that only 25 per cent of those surveyed felt that their critical decision-making times had
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fallen in the last five years. Furthermore, the study revealed that only 16 per cent of all executives surveyed felt that they were very effective at making decisions about how and when to respond to change.
Dan Veitkus, General Manager, EMEA at Progress Software said: “This research demonstrates that the pace of change in modern business is significantly affecting the ability of European organisations to respond effectively and make decisions. Today, socio- economic events are happening at much faster pace, which means that organisations are increasingly learning the value of responding in real-time and how it can help them to become truly responsive to what is happening around them. By understanding the value of responsiveness, decision makers will be able to see and understand situations
quickly and decide the right course of action in the face of the unexpected, allowing them to affect a change in that direction immediately.“
Chris Webber, Senior Editor, EIU, and author of the report said: “Today businesses are under more pressure than ever to deliver better results and increased efficiency at a reduced cost. What this research demonstrates is that despite this pressure, the inflexibility of some organisations means that they are, ironically, less well prepared to respond to changing circumstances that can severely affect their bottom line. The inability to respond to change and manage it effectively can be one of the key causes of business inefficiency and could be the difference between success and failure in today’s economic climate.”
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