Barcelona, November 2011. Over 4000 attendees, of which about 600 from the Benelux and around 30 from Romania attending, more than 300 IT-related information sessions and workshops in 3 days – that's Gartner 2011. According to Gartner, an all time high, which is at least a bit weird in this economic 'perfect' storm, as mentioned in one of the many session.

Yesterday's sessions gave some sneak previews on the future role of the CIO who should deliver measurable business benefits and act more as a strategic advisor for the CEO. In my humble opinion this is not the future, it's already happening and we, as ISDC, have to walk side by side not only as a delivery partner but also as a challenging partner bringing new ideas and supporting innovation. The new CIO is called the Chief Innovation Officer!

To make room for innovation, Gartner states that the CIO needs a more creative destructive attitude; burn down legacy and make room for new things like cloud, mobile and social, three themes that run like a red thread throughout all sessions. Also, new delivery models supporting these concepts were discussed – cloud-based and towards the corporate app-store and, for even more business agility, 'extreme outsourcing' was touched. To be able to facilitate, IT should make sure there is a solid Enterprise Architecture together with a solution mindset to speed up developments. Let's walk along!