Analysis: Should tech leaders be CIOs or CTOs?

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“In the UK, 70 per cent of our economy is now services, and not manufacturing based,” he said. “This is at 80 per cent in the US, yet we still have an IT management education system geared towards our manufacturing heritage.”

As a result, the increasing commoditisation of technology and consumption of IT direct from its suppliers as services would call for a new breed of IT leader – one that can negotiate value and manage suppliers, as well as the information marshalled by the systems they provide.

“Look at the public sector,” said Kennedy, “where we’re seen organisations become consumers of technology rather than purely its buyers. That’s why academic institutions are starting to look at the science of services.”

He said it would be the advent of this ‘services science’ discipline, as currently run by Westminster and Exeter Universities and under development in others, that will help reconcile the gap between IT and business and render the CTO versus CIO debate finally obsolete.

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