Qs and As with Jeff Reich about his upcoming panel at Innotech

Q.1: As the director of operations for the Institute for CyberSecurity at the University of Texas at San Antonio, it would seem
natural that you would speak on a security issue. Yet, you are
serving as the program chair for "The Future of CIOs" at the March 4
Innotech. What inspired you to want to be part of this discussion?

Jeff Reich: The future of IT and of CIOs intrigues me because I believe that we have witnessed the emergence of another generation of IT and more importantly, how IT will be used. Enterprises have so many choices now when it comes to technology decisions that rules we used two years ago may no longer apply. Individual business units can now leverage technology available to them that may not require much of the traditional IT infrastructure and resources.


Q.2: How will the roles for technical management change for CIOs in the future? And, what are some of the biggest challenges to CIOs as well?

Jeff Reich; I think that the major change in store for CIOs is the role that they play across the business. Instead of being the manager of all IT resources for the enterprise, CIOs will take on a role of consulting business units in how technology can work for them, and which services they may want to use directly from a provider, possibly without using many IT resources.


Q.3: While I know you have spoken a lot on cloud security, how will cloud data storage impact businesses?

Jeff Reich: I think that the success of cloud computing will affect business in two major areas. The amount of money that they spend on technology resources and how they spend it will shift. A lot of typical capital expenses will now be treated as operating expenses as technology shifts to delivering services instead of simply resources. The second major affect will be how business protect their assets. Appropriate controls will probably need to shift more towards the application and not have as much focus on the data.


Q.4: Is there anything else you wish to add about your panel discussion?

[Jeff Reich] I think that this panel discussion get people thinking about what is next for IT and what role they can play in it.