Thirteen percent of respondents said their CIOs are “transformers” serving as full partners to the business in digital transformations. Another 43 percent are “advocates,” meaning that while their organizations haven’t fully embraced digital, they are piloting or exploring digital projects. However, 37 percent of executives are “servicers: who develop digital capabilities in response to requests or guidance from other business units. Lastly, 7 percent identified as “plumbers,” engaged in running the traditional tasks of IT, such as provisioning servers.
The digital disruption, including the evolution to cloud, data analytics, social and mobile capabilities that underpin digital transformations, is such that customers are beginning to resemble cloud vendors, Benioff says. Many Salesforce.com customers provide cloud services to their customers, operate on a deferred revenue model and move faster to product high rates of innovation, Benioff says. That’s leading to larger contracts with cloud providers such as Salesforce.com.
