Virtualization is burgeoning in the enterprise, and it will gradually be edged aside by cloud computing, which then will steer the IT department's focus away from technology and toward data, predicts Ed Sperling at Forbes. This shift will have a major impact on how technologies are used and evaluated as well as on how IT executives do their job, Sperling warns. 

As data becomes a growing asset within an organization, the skills needed to maximize its value will become paramount. Those in charge of IT will have to have a thorough understanding of how data can give the business a strategic advantage, Sperling advises. 

"Almost all of the new CIOs inside of companies come from a business background rather than a technology background. This shift has been under way for some time," he writes in a column titled, "CIOs: Be Careful What you Wish For."

"Companies have used the CIO job as a vital stop for senior executives looking to learn about all parts of the business. Increasingly it will be a highly defined skill set and a destination rather than just a stopping-off point."

Until now, IT was too complicated and costly for non-IT executives to want to interfere too much with it, meaning that business units had to deal with the technology provided. "In the future it will be the other way around," he writes. "The technology will have to work with the ideas, and these ideas will be changed over much more rapidly if they don't meet expectations within a given timetable."

Once the tables turn, it will become more important to know how to measure technology's performance and costs.

For more:
- see Ed Sperling's column at Forbes

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