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Event: Meeting of the Minds
On June 5th, Outlook Ventures sponsored and hosted the 5th "Meeting of the Minds" event overlooking the water, at the Seaport Conference Center in Redwood City. The event show cased several of the CIOs who are members of Outlook's CIO Council and focused on the topic of "CIO Perspectives: Enterprise Software and Infrastructure".
The event was led by Brian Bauer of Bauer and Associates. Mr. Bauer currently consults with IT organizations around the country and has a distinguished career managing IT (he was formerly CIO of Cadence and VP of IT at United Airlines). Mr. Bauer and host, Randy Haykin of Outlook Ventures, were joined by four other IT leaders from the Bay Area:
Louie Gasparini, SVP Internet Services, Wells Fargo
George Lin, VP & CIO , Documentum
Armin Pressler, CIO, WindRiver Systems
Jim Spitze, former serial CIO and Director, Silicon Valley CIO Roundtable
Mr. Bauer's opening presentation set the pace for the evening with an "environmental scan" of the big issues currently driving IT spending:
a renewed focus of the enterprise on performance management (monitoring/measurement of operational performance),
emphasis on cash generation,
an intense scrutiny of financial and operating risks in policies, procedures and systems (e.g. Sarbanes/Oxley Act and implications on internal controls)
an emphasis on how to get more information/market control organically
"Y2K Hangover" (under-utilized ERP capacity and oversold CRM systems)
Mr. Bauer also shared national statistics on expected recovery of IT spending among large organizations. Although IT spending as a % of corporate revenue fell from 4.3% average to ~3% from 2000-2003, estimates for growth in IT budget in the coming year range from a low of -5% (Meta) to 7% (Gartner). The vertical markets with the highest expected growth are Healthcare, Insurance, Pharma and Hospitality. The lowest growth is expected in the Financial Services, Consumer, and Electronics industries.
Our panel of CIO guests contributed to an hour-long discussion of the role of the CIO as a change agent, current IT areas of technology focus, industry trends, top IT projects for 2003-2004 and a discussion on how the perspectives and priorities of IT will shift with an economic recovery.
Outlook's goal for Meeting of the Minds is to provide an informative session on customer needs and trends to local portfolio and prospective CEOs, Limited Partners, CIO/CTO Council and select business partners. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our panelists and guests for their attendance and making this event memorable.
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