Sumit Johar has been modernizing BlackLine’s IT environment since becoming CIO of the software company in early 2024. As a longtime IT leader, Johar has plenty of experience overhauling tech stacks, but he says the work has taken on new meaning — and urgency — in the AI era. “The definition of modernization has literally…
DetailsI recently met with a client’s CEO and CIO together. The CIO asked, “How much should we spend on AI next year?” My response was, “If you do your job right, your CEO will ask why you aren’t spending more.” I spend a lot of time with CIOs who are planning their AI investments. One…
DetailsMost CIOs can easily describe their AI initiatives, but struggle to demonstrate and report on AI value and ROI. This is evidenced by Gartner’s AI ROI Vendor Sentiment survey, which found that 27% of respondents strongly agree that ROI from AI initiatives is difficult to quantify. In addition, only one in four had a clear…
DetailsFor a few years now, the headlines have become familiar: yet another company laying off workers as a result of AI. But in recent months, we’ve seen a new twist. Some of those same companies are now reconsidering staffing decisions after recognizing the continued need for experienced professionals. Ford offers a telling example. In 2023,…
DetailsI have spent more than 30 years in enterprise IT and managed services. For most of that time, small businesses adopted new technology on a predictable lag. Large enterprises moved first because they had the budget, staff and risk tolerance to experiment. Everyone else waited for the tools to mature and prices to fall. That…
DetailsAI has arrived in the business world — and the results are thus far underwhelming. According to McKinsey, 89% of companies now use AI regularly, and the majority are at least experimenting with AI agents. However, a significant gap remains between usage and economic success. “We find that only 37% of companies attribute any positive…
DetailsClients ask me this question perhaps more than any other. They’ve usually just come off a bad experience, either analytics stuck in IT’s backlog for months or analytics scattered across the business without anyone accountable for what it all means. My answer is always the same. Split it. IT owns the data engineering. The business…
DetailsSeveral months ago, I was invited to an event for CTOs. Just looking around the room, I could see someone had made an assumption about my title. I am a chief transformation officer, not a chief technology officer. I stayed anyway to see how the other type of CTO thinks about AI. When a CISO…
DetailsHyperscalers are rushing to build more data centers to run AI workloads — but will the AI industry ever generate enough revenue to pay for that infrastructure? Researchers at Bain and Company have looked into this and concluded that productivity gains from existing AI services are not enough to justify the money being pumped in:…
DetailsTools such as Anthropic Claude Code or OpenAI Codex have changed the face of software development, and all the signs are that this investment is set to increase further. But is paying a monthly subscription (and perhaps additional usage fees) cost-effective? Will the increasing level of investment in AI-generated software prove to be worthwhile? That’s…
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