Global CIO: Even Oracle & SAP Agree: The Tactical CIO Is DeadGlobal CIO: Even Oracle & SAP Agree: The Tactical CIO Is Dead

"And I have to say that with respect to CIOs, we have tremendous respect for them and their management and IT overall—but the business world has reached the point where if [the CIO] can't have a conversation that goes way beyond technology stacks to roadmapping business strategies and creating growth, those CIOs are just not gonna be relevant," McDermott said.

"For any IT project, hitting budget is okay and finishing on time is okay but what decision-makers really want is value--they want to know that these IT projects are going to steadily increase the company's ability to grow."

Let's be honest: we all say that this is obvious and we get it and there's no need to beat it to death, but I still hear an alarming number—maybe 20%?—of CIOs say that it's not their job to engage with customers, or it's not their job to understand the competitive dynamics of the marketplace in which they compete, or that it's just too hard to make the time to take on additional responsibilities and to think about lots more non-tech issues because they're short-staffed and blah blah blah.

McDermott nailed it, dead-center perfect: "CIOs are just not gonna be relevant" unless they can help create strategic business models and drive new revenue. It's no longer a nice-to-have; it's a gotta-have.

And Oracle president Phillips agrees—not something that happens often between Oracle and SAP, so it must mean something, right?

"Customers want advice on things like, 'I have a lot of Oracle technology but don't know if I'm employing best practices, or how do I compare to how everyone else is running their stack,' because those customers are all kinda isolated, and the only one that can look across all those customers and give them proactive advice on how they stack up and how they benchmark against everyone else is really us," Phillips said.

"Customers want a lot more of that, so we're having to engage more often and higher up in the organization, especially as you start to touch mission-critical industry processes that drive their revenue—then you end up talking to CEOs and CFOs.

"So I would say six or seven years ago we only knew the CIOs and now we know the executive suite. That's been the transition and I think we have good relationships at all those levels, and people are asking for more," Phillips said.

"As we're starting a new project, a lot of CEOs will ask me, 'What are the things I should be doing? What are the best practices for being successful?' "

Both executives went out of their ways to express their respect and admiration for their CIO customers but they also said quite clearly that the scope of work and the transformational potential of their projects have made it essential for Oracle and SAP executives to meet with other C-level customer execs and line of business heads. And while this isn't new, it's out there now in much sharper relief than ever before.

And I think what's changed so much here in 2010 is that, as noted above, such business acumen and openness from CIOs was regarded in the past as a bonus, an unexpected bit of luck. But today, it is absolutely indispensable. McDermott frames it in terms of business impact, and that could be a great metric for CIOs to develop and spend a lot of time thinking about.

"Our customers today are demanding business solutions with real, quantifiable business impact," McDermott said. "And that's happening because now we're seeing the true convergence between business and IT. Last year in particular and for some time before that, IT was efficient—and now companies need to grow and they know they're going to need to lean a lot harder on IT to help the organization become more agile and grow and innovate, and the organizations that can do that across all types of technologies or regardless of what types of technologies they have—on-premise or on-demand or whatever type of device—those are gonna be the winners.

"Business impact," he concluded, "has become the one big thing."

RECOMMENDED READING: Global CIO: Inside SAP: 10 Factors Behind Its Dramatic Turnaround Global CIO: Oracle President Phillips Says Standardizing On Oracle Is The IT Cure Global CIO: Oracle President Phillips Says 22% Annual Fees Great For CIOs Global CIO: SAP's McDermott Slaps Back At Oracle And Refocuses On Customers Global CIO: IBM Took 'Goldmine Of Taxpayer Money,' Claims Bureaucrat Global CIO: 10 Tech Acquisitions That Would Rock The Industry Global CIO: Microsoft BI Wins Raves From Giant Shipping Company Global CIO: IBM Sees Surge In Customers' Transformation Projects Global CIO: WestJet's IT Nightmare And The Power Of Customers Global CIO: Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Top 10 Reasons Why Mobile Is #1 Bob Evans is senior VP and director of information's Global CIO unit.

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