Nikoleta and Associates

Market signals | Technology leadership

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Keeping essential services dependable while making the next technology decision.

Overview

The CIO’s remit: technology that the business can depend on

The Chief Information Officer is responsible for the technology capabilities that support the organization's work. The remit connects business systems, technology investment, service operations and the teams and suppliers that deliver them. It requires a view of the whole estate, including the less visible dependencies behind everyday business services and customer commitments.

Today, the CIO must keep essential services dependable while helping the business change. That includes managing applications and infrastructure, planning renewals, prioritizing demand and coordinating delivery. Decisions about a platform are also decisions about operating cost, integration, support and the effort required of the people who use it every working day.

The role works closely with business leaders to establish service expectations and ownership. Security, data and AI leaders bring related expertise, but their responsibilities do not remove the need for a coherent technology portfolio. The CIO connects these contributions so that individual projects can become services the organization is able to run.

A useful overview of the function follows critical business services rather than a list of systems. Who owns the service, what does it cost and which changes does it need? That perspective helps a CIO distinguish useful modernization from additional complexity and frame technology choices in terms that operating and financial leaders can assess.

Role signals

What is shaping the role now

Business services and technology

Ownership of business services

78% of cost-management teams report to the CIO or CTO organization.

What this asks of the role

Connect each essential technology service to leaders who understand its business purpose and can make decisions about it.

2026 | FinOps technology cost teams.

Technology plans and spending

Planning technology changes

80% report CEO direction for AI-driven business transformation.

83% say data silos hinder innovation, real-time analysis and decisions.

What this asks of the role

Sequence upgrades, contract renewals and replacements so the business can prepare for connected changes.

2026 | Global technology executives; 2025 | Global data leaders | Separate findings; not parts of a total.

The role today

  • Ownership of business services

    Connect each essential technology service to leaders who understand its business purpose and can make decisions about it.

  • Choosing technology priorities

    Agree which requests should move first based on business benefit, shared dependencies and the team's available capacity.

  • Planning technology changes

    Sequence upgrades, contract renewals and replacements so the business can prepare for connected changes.

  • Making technology costs clear

    Show what it costs to run current services and introduce new capabilities so leaders can make informed spending choices.

  • Introducing technology into work

    Coordinate releases with operating teams so new technology is usable when it becomes available.

  • Technology team readiness

    Maintain the technical knowledge needed to support essential services and deliver planned changes.

Pressure Points

The CIO’s pressure: modernization without interrupting service

The CIO's recurring pressure is to fund and deliver change while keeping the existing technology estate operational. Business requests tend to emphasize new capability, while renewal, maintenance and recovery work are less visible until a service is interrupted. Both draw on the same technical specialists, supplier capacity and operating budget.

Legacy dependencies make prioritization harder. Replacing one application may require changes to interfaces, access arrangements and reporting used by several functions. A project can meet its own milestone while leaving another team with additional support work. The CIO must understand these connections before committing to timing, cost and service expectations.

Commercial decisions add constraints of their own. Contract renewals can arrive before an alternative is ready, and usage-based costs may increase without a clear business owner. At the same time, teams may introduce local tools when central delivery feels too slow. The resulting complexity can increase the effort needed for integration and protection.

The practical task is to expose these trade-offs in the portfolio discussion. Review run costs alongside change commitments, identify shared specialists and make service ownership explicit. A credible roadmap shows what will be retired or simplified as well as what will be added, giving the business a realistic account of the capacity available.

Common pressure points

Business expectations and service ownership

  • Systems without an operating owner

    Technology teams may maintain an application without a business leader able to decide its priorities.

    What to look atCheck which essential services lack an accountable business decision maker.

  • Service expectations left implicit

    Business teams may assume availability or support levels that technology has not agreed or funded.

    What to look atCompare expected service hours and response times with actual support arrangements.

Spending and technology commitments

  • Usage costs moving unexpectedly

    Cloud or software spending can increase as usage grows without a clear link to business value.

    What to look atCompare spending changes with service usage and accountable business demand.

  • Purchase costs hiding ongoing effort

    An attractive initial proposal can leave integration, support or retirement costs outside the investment decision.

    What to look atCheck the full lifecycle requirements of approved technology proposals.

Delivery alongside reliable operation

  • Releases ahead of business readiness

    A technically complete change may reach users before their processes, guidance or support are ready.

    What to look atReview readiness evidence from the teams expected to use the change.

  • Recovery plans not tested together

    Individual systems may recover successfully while the full business service still depends on an unavailable connection.

    What to look atReview recovery exercises that follow the complete service rather than one component.

People and cross-functional decisions

  • Specialist knowledge concentrated

    Essential systems can depend on a small number of people while those same specialists support new projects.

    What to look atReview knowledge coverage and overlapping specialist commitments.

  • Business decisions arriving late

    Technology work can wait when requirements or trade-offs need a sponsor decision that has not been scheduled.

    What to look atTrack work waiting for business input and the cost of the delay.

Selected external benchmarks

Research note: These figures describe the groups studied. They do not measure your organization’s performance or set goals for it.

  • Tracking technology deployments
    70%

    say business teams deploy technology faster than IT can track.

    2026 – Global technology executives

  • Seeing AI spending
    85%

    lack a complete, real-time view of AI spending.

    2026 – Global technology executives

  • Software vulnerabilities
    31%

    of recorded breaches began with attackers exploiting software vulnerabilities.

    2026 – DBIR breach dataset

  • Readiness for more AI agents
    11%

    feel fully prepared for the AI agent scale they expect.

    2026 – Global technology executives

Conditions to Deliver

Dependable services with business ownership

The CIO contributes best when business leaders own the outcomes expected from technology and service teams have clear responsibility after launch. Shared priorities, transparent cost information and dependable architecture allow investment choices to balance new capability with resilience, security and the health of existing platforms.

The role also needs close working relationships across data, security, finance, procurement and operations. Clear decision rights and service measures help teams respond to incidents, technical constraints and changing demand without returning every choice to the executive level. Funding that covers maintenance, skills and adoption gives the CIO room to build services the organization can rely on.

Reflection questions

Is technology becoming a dependable, business-owned service?

  1. Which business leader owns the outcome expected from each priority technology investment after the launch is complete?

  2. Do funding decisions include maintenance, resilience, adoption and service ownership as well as initial implementation?

  3. Where do architecture or platform dependencies narrow the enterprise choices leaders believe they have?

  4. Can finance and business teams see technology cost in relation to use, service quality and the value the capability supports?

  5. What needs to be retired, simplified or strengthened so new AI and data services do not add another unsupported layer?

Future Evolution

The CIO’s evolution: from projects to lasting business services

The CIO's role may move further toward managing technology as an evolving portfolio of business services. Projects remain useful for defined changes, but services need continuing ownership, investment and support. This makes adoption, reliability and operating outcomes more important complements to delivery milestones and the completion of a technical implementation.

Shared platforms can help by making common work easier: provisioning an environment, connecting approved systems or applying consistent access controls. Their value depends on whether teams actually use them and whether they reduce effort. The CIO needs feedback from business users and delivery teams, rather than treating a platform's launch as evidence of success.

AI-enabled services add requirements for monitoring, human fallback and ongoing evaluation. These sit alongside existing responsibilities for availability, cost and supplier management. The CIO's contribution is to make new capabilities operationally dependable, working with AI, data and security counterparts while keeping the business owner accountable for the result of the service.

A practical starting point is to review one important service from customer outcome through technology dependencies. Identify its owner, support model, improvement priorities and retirement obligations. The aim is an estate that can evolve through understandable, funded decisions, rather than a succession of projects whose long-term responsibilities are unclear after their delivery teams leave.

Role evolution

From projects to enduring business services

  • Services beyond projects

    Continuously updated platforms may shift CIO attention toward ownership throughout a service's use, improvement and retirement.

    What to watchAccountable service owners remaining after project completion.

  • Business-level service commitments

    Connected workflows may require CIO service commitments to describe whether complete business tasks can continue successfully.

    What to watchService measures reflecting complete business tasks.

Investment across a changing technology estate

  • Deliberate technology retirement

    Growing tool portfolios may increase the CIO's emphasis on retiring services that no longer justify their support.

    What to watchRetirement included alongside new technology investment.

  • Value throughout operation

    Regular service updates may make technology investment review an ongoing partnership between the CIO and business owners.

    What to watchFunding adjusted using live service results.

Operations supporting faster change

  • Readiness through continuing change

    Frequent releases may make support, access and recovery readiness a continuing CIO responsibility rather than a launch milestone.

    What to watchOperating arrangements updated with significant service changes.

  • Recovery across providers

    Cloud and partner dependence may extend recovery planning beyond internal systems to the complete business service.

    What to watchRecovery exercises involving providers and operating teams.

Technology leadership across the organization

  • Work design before tools

    AI may bring the CIO earlier into workflow design, before the business selects a particular technology product.

    What to watchProposals starting with work and desired outcomes.

  • AI as an operating service

    Growing AI adoption may extend the CIO's service portfolio to include integration, availability, costs and ongoing support.

    What to watchAI included in normal service ownership and reviews.

Selected external benchmarks

Research note: These figures describe the groups studied. They do not measure your organization’s performance or set goals for it.

  • Process redesign
    30%

    are redesigning key processes around AI.

    2026 – Leaders at AI-active firms

  • Including people costs
    28%

    are starting or planning to track labour costs alongside technology spending.

    2026 – FinOps technology cost teams

  • Expected growth in AI agents
    38%

    increase in AI agent deployments is expected by 2027.

    2026 – Global technology executives

  • Adaptable AI systems
    10%

    higher reported AI returns at adaptable firms; an association, not causation.

    2026 – Global technology executives