As a chief technology officer (CTO) you have one of the most valuable and difficult jobs in modern businesses. Technological change is happening at a dizzying speed and entirely new business models are emerging to 'disrupt' the status quo through creativity and innovation. There is always hope that your organisation could be the new Airbnb, transforming hotels, or Disney Parks, who have modernised the theme park experience through wearable technology. Research has indicated that companies who embrace new technologies and integrate them into their strategic plans have greater success than those who fail to do so.
This is no small task. Technologies like cloud computing, intelligent software, big data and mobile computing are affecting all industries. On top of those, you may be expected to harness 3-D printing, autonomous vehicles, fuel cells or robotic prosthetics in order to stay competitive in your specific industry.
As the CTO, you must be monitoring changes in your industry for new technologies to determine if they are relevant to your organisation, plus be able to integrate them into your overall IT strategy effectively.
1) They help you define your role
Unless you're part of a conglomerate-sized organisation, you may be functioning as a CIO with CTO expectations on your shoulders. What do we mean?
When the roles are separate, a Chief Information Officer (CIO) focuses internally, building and maintaining an efficient IT infrastructure on a daily basis. A CTO can then act in a complementary role to focus externally, predicting customer needs and strategising how new technologies can be integrated to achieve long-term goals.
When you invite a managed IT provider to become a trusted part of your team, they take on the ongoing hosting and monitoring for your IT infrastructure. Whether you require managed IT support, remote network monitoring or resilient disaster recovery, employing a managed IT provider will allow you to focus more on new technologies externally, and how to creatively integrate them.
2) They connect you to expert advice
As a CTO, you know that it's important to be in tune with new trends, but you also know that you can't be an expert in everything. That's why managed IT is so valuable! Instead of spending more resources to expand your internal team, managed services give you access to experts in PCI-DSS, cyber security and cloud hosting. This depth of experience helps you to make strategic decisions with confidence. The more niche your industry is, the less likely you are to be on the cutting edge of new cloud computing technologies. Managed IT takes the everyday burden of system maintenance and frees you to become an expert in your field.
3) They increase your business agility
Embracing new technology trends is time sensitive, and the last thing you want as a CTO is to be a late adopter. Managed IT services help your company to be more agile, so you can easily respond to industry changes and strategic shifts.
Think back to your preparation for recent data protection legislation, in light of recent high-profile security breaches. With a trusted managed services provider who supplies the cyber security expertise, you could have pursued new technologies for your organisation without needing to halt those plans and lose valuable time to become a cloud security expert. Managed IT services help you to be flexible and respond quickly to shifts that affect your industry.