The IT landscape has evolved exponentially over the past decade, inextricably enmeshing IT and the business. Such significant gains have CIOs contemplating the philosophical question: is IT a business driver or a business enabler? Dave Payne, vice president of drilling and completions at Chevron Corporation, argues that IT is both. There are significant opportunities for CIOs to partner with the business, including building a dependable data foundation that enables the business to make lower-risk decisions; driving opportunities for innovation; and increasing organizational efficiency by standardizing business processes. In this interactive opening keynote, Payne will challenge your view of IT within your organization and provide tactics for strategically partnering with the business.

When Tracy Nolan stepped into his position as VP and CIO at Commercial Metals Company in 2010, he found an IT department in dire need of renovation. Despite facing a failed SAP implementation and out-of-control spending, he saw the potential for an efficient IT department that could help drive business value for the organization. Over the course of 18 months, he developed and executed a strategic plan to transform the department and to ultimately cut costs in half. In this session, Nolan will discuss the process of transforming a flailing IT department, including his strategies for fostering teamwork and accountability, introducing a balanced outsourcing model, bringing in new talent, and inspiring his team to achieve new heights.

The CIO as a business leader is a complex role, requiring a balanced understanding of technology and business. A solid knowledge of the state of global economic health can be a helpful complement to the CIO’s business abilities. In this presentation, accomplished economist Dr. Adriana Z. Fernandez from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, will lead attendees through a high-level examination of global macroeconomics, and how Houston area businesses may be affected.

Session discovery topics:
• Perceived shift in monetary policy around the world
• Brazil, Russia, China and India’s deceleration, projecting a slower growth trend in 2013
• Uncertainty in the world’s financial markets, focusing on Europe

Technology is changing the very nature of business, and it’s changing the way employees work. As organizations use new technology to transform their business models, everything within the business is affected — from the way teams operate to the way decisions are made. As teams expand the scope of their roster to include people around the corner and around the world, open technologies and social collaboration tools are “must haves.” In this forward-looking session, Carol Sormilic, vice president and transformation executive for IBM’s global workforce and web processes, will discuss the new frontier of the workplace, and how the CIO can prepare for what’s coming next.

As organizations move away from legacy systems, CIOs must understand the capabilities of cloud and the way its integration affects the structure of IT. CIOs are well versed in the technical aspects of cloud-based solutions, but cloud’s implementation may challenge the way they understand the structure of their IT organization, such as employees that require retraining, skills that must be repurposed, and attempts to remove silos by addressing the tradition of certification. In this collaborative boardroom session moderated by Dave Katt of VMware, seating will be limited to 25 attendees willing to discuss the ways cloud is affecting their organization and where they see it taking their business in the future.

The 2012 Houston CIO Executive Summit featured a panel of three CIOs discussing last year’s hot topic: BYOD. They focused on their emerging BYOD policies, their strategies for mitigating risk and their expectations surrounding IT’s evolving role in the workplace. Over the past year, they’ve seen BYOD mature beyond the theoretical stage as it took root in the culture and strategy of their respective organizations. Some initial concerns and expectations were validated, while others proved to be less prominent than expected. In this session, CIOs from Chevron Upstream, Stewart Information Services and Apache Corporation will provide a one year check-in, walking you through their real-world BYOD experiences and the resulting challenges, successes and unintended consequences.

PwC’s recent digital IQ survey found that CIOs are key players in the “digital conversations” taking place in the C-suites of leading companies around the globe, and that Big Data is high on their agendas. The survey also found that investments that go beyond simply acquiring data to those that put Big Data to work may be lacking. Putting any data to work demands the definition, merger, and integration of data using agreed-upon design, protocols and tools. This challenge mounts as large volumes of diverse data are added to the mix. CIOs are in a unique position to help drive the digital conversation while leading change to the organization’s information strategy, governance and architecture necessary to capitalize on the opportunity of Big Data. This session will focus on the challenge of putting Big Data to work by merging and integrating data, and will share specific strategies to quicken the pace of Big Data adoption in order to drive business value through high-speed business intelligence.

Mobility in the enterprise is no longer strictly about handsets and aircards; wireless connectivity will soon be built into virtually everything with a microprocessor. Increasingly, businesses across industries are incorporating mobility into their products, systems, and processes to achieve operational efficiencies, increase profitability, establish competitive advantage, and provide an enhanced customer experience. This transformation includes M2M implementations and the integration of mobility with cloud services. During this transformation, CIOs may find that integrating mobility into the fabric of the business is both an opportunity and challenge. In this interactive session moderated by Sprint, participants will discuss opportunities for integrating mobility into the business, ensuring that the process is communicated in a way that resonates with peers on the executive team, and the key role that partners can play in designing and fulfilling the vision.

The traditional role of a CIO consisted of the acquisition, integration and application of technology, but over time this role has changed to include more of a business and industry focus. The past few years have seen this change accelerate. CIOs are now required to be more than a cost-cutter when it comes to managing the IT environment. As a result, the role of the “Next Generation CIO” is of a multi-faceted nature with focus on areas such as leadership and change management. More importantly, the “I” in CIO will no longer just stand for information, but will morph into a blend of integration, innovation, inoculation, international and information.

Big Data is revolutionizing not only how companies run their business, but also how they keep the business secure, and more adaptive to the shifting threat landscape. From a security perspective, Big Data technology can be used to monitor behavior in order to look for patterns related to user authentication; malware beaconing; and other threats — both with signatures, and without. In this session, Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO and COO of EMC’s Center of Excellence, will explore the impact of increasing the number of sensors in our environment, and how utilizing a Big Data platform may better enable an organization to analyze and detect patterns faster.

Twenty years ago, the importance of computer technology in both society and business was only beginning to be realized. Today, technology is an integral, driving aspect of any organization — regardless of industry. An IT department without the necessary, forward-looking skill sets is a disadvantage to the organization. Unfortunately, these skill sets are also difficult to find, and candidates with those skills are in high demand. The challenges in this new environment are many — how can we encourage students to pursue and complete STEM degrees? What proficiencies are students lacking when they graduate? How has consumerization’s disruptive impact changed the expectations and skills of the IT talent pool? This session features panelists with diverse perspectives on this complex issue. Come prepared to join the conversation, focusing on the development of homegrown talent in order to fulfill Houston-area organizations’ immediate and long-term IT needs.

Many CIOs are faced with divisional and functional silos within their organization, but may be hesitant to introduce collaboration solutions for fear of an unclear ROI. How can CIOs help their organizations maintain the autonomy of their respective business units and advocate for a culture of transparency and cooperation — all while driving down the bottom line? In this session, join Christopher Morace, chief strategy officer at Jive for a real-world case study focused on the business benefits of enabling teams, divisions and departments to operate as one company.

With the number of attacks on cyber networks growing, it is more important than ever for businesses to be aware of the threat landscape — both internal and external — and aware of opportunities to collaborate in order to predict, prevent, detect and respond to incidents. In this informative session, FBI Special Agents Angela Haun and Eric de Carlos will discuss the current trends in cyber threats, opportunities for collaboration and the necessary steps to keep your business safe.

Session discovery topics:

• Current trends in cybersecurity
• Understanding insider threats — awareness, education and prevention

To fully enable, facilitate and accelerate IT’s impact on business strategy and competitive differentiation, there must be fundamental changes in how the function is organized, applied and managed. The realities of the new work and business environment — greater interdependence across teams both internal and external, more frequent organizational change, new service delivery and sourcing models and ever-expanding technology choices — require that CIOs transform themselves and their organizations.

IT leaders who fail to adapt to new work environments, processes and business models will leave their organizations disadvantaged as productivity and innovation lag. CIO discussion leader Anup Sharma from GE Oil and Gas, along with moderators Brian Foster from CEB and Jim Stikeleather from Dell, will review key CEB research findings and the actions CIOs must take to adapt to the enterprise of the future.

Houston-based Sysco Corporation, North America’s leading foodservice distributor, is a Fortune 70, $42 billion company with more than 46,000 employees. While serving almost every major market in the U.S., Canada and Ireland, Sysco is in the midst of transforming its business to better manage its costs, improve its profitability and make it easier to conduct business with customers and suppliers. Sysco President and CEO Bill DeLaney will share his thoughts on leadership and the ways technology enables this industry leader to stay ahead of its competitors while helping its customers, approximately 400,000 restaurants and food operators, succeed as well.