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Michael Ringman is CIO at TELUS Digital (formerly TELUS International), providing digital-first, AI-fueled customer experiences.
CIOs have seen their portfolios dramatically change as new technologies emerge. In the past, CIOs managed IT systems, service desks and technological infrastructure. Today, they’ve become an innovation influencer, playing a pivotal role in business strategy, resilience and growth.
This pivot is unsurprising. Businesses are experiencing rapid digital transformation. PwC’s Pulse Survey on business reinvention found executives planned to prioritize investments in new technologies, including generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), in 2025.
As stewards of change, the CIO role takes many shapes. They blend technical and strategic approaches when adopting responsible AI and incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices across IT infrastructure. They’re called on to streamline organizations through strategic technology partnerships and shore up defenses against cyber threats.
The modern CIO is entering an era that demands strategic oversight and decisive action to shape the future of tech leadership in organizations.
From Tech Troubleshooter To Strategic Trailblazer
As computing ramped up in the 1980s, CIOs ensured back-end operations and systems ran efficiently. The rise of the internet and email in the 1990s fueled the uptake of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like SAP and Oracle, and CIOs shifted to an integrator role, sourcing and implementing enterprise-wide systems, optimizing workflows and enabling global connectivity.
The dot-com era led to the rise of cybersecurity and the explosion of e-commerce. The financial crisis from 2007 to 2009 saw the CIO’s role expand to digital strategy and cybersecurity, enabling businesses to safely transition to online operations while optimizing IT budgets, consolidating systems and demonstrating tech ROI.
The 2010 and early 2020s introduced the adoption of cloud platforms, big data, AI and IoT, partly accelerated by the pandemic. Again the CIO role morphed, this time to managing hybrid IT environments. CIOs also implemented real-time analytics, enabling innovation through cloud-first, AI-powered business processes.
All this positioned the CIO at the forefront of business transformations that rely heavily on technology to remain competitive.
Sustainable Tech, Sustainable Growth
CIOs are positioned now at the intersection of technology and sustainability, with mandates that include helping move their companies toward energy efficiency and carbon neutrality amid rising energy costs, consumer scrutiny, new regulations and sustainability commitments.
PwC’s October 2024 Pulse survey says 33% of Fortune 1000 CIOs fully integrate AI’s power consumption and IT’s overall carbon footprint into their sustainability strategy, and 42% are transitioning data centers to renewable energy. I’ve seen this shift firsthand in my role. At TELUS Digital, we’re developing a climate strategy and road map, working with our parent company TELUS to combine short- and long-term commitments in support of our 2030 goal of becoming net-carbon neutral.
Sustainability is bigger than environmental impacts. CIOs also help develop AI ethics and governance frameworks to ensure responsible AI, bias mitigation and compliance with global regulations.
They also focus on the people building the technology. Attracting and retaining talent with the skills needed to build diverse, cross-functional teams is critical to maintaining an effective talent pool. CIOs must work closely with HR to ensure they hire and nurture the right workforce.
As skill requirements shift, working with learning and development teams to develop and execute a road map with a forward-looking curriculum for upskilling and reskilling existing employees is crucial.
It Takes A Village
In the age of AI and dynamic technology architectures, organizations can be buoyed by the strength of their partners. CIOs are architects of robust partner ecosystems, from sourcing vendors with the right solutions to being at the forefront of tech trends. The challenge is knowing when to buy, build or partner.
According to Foundry’s 2024 State of the CIO survey, nearly half (48%) of IT leaders look to their CIOs to proactively identify business opportunities and make technology and provider recommendations.
They’re helping to drive organizations toward providers with open API and developer-friendly ecosystems to ensure their organizations stay seamlessly integrated across the business. They advise on acquisition prospects and help determine if their organizations have the expertise and time to build a capability in-house. If not, they give crucial guidance on strategic partnerships, such as choosing vendor-agnostic providers to allow the business flexibility to adapt as needs evolve.
From Firewalls To Future-Proofing
Amid increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, CIOs play a significant role in implementing corporate security and governance frameworks to safeguard confidential data and assets.
According to the State of the CIO survey cited above, nearly half (48%) of IT leaders say increasing cybersecurity protections was the top targeted business initiative this year. CIOs are working alongside the C-suite to guide the adoption of emerging technologies and secure cloud solutions like contact centers as a service to help insulate against threats.
They drive the implementation of best practices like automated red teaming, a type of adversarial testing where ethical hackers proactively look for vulnerabilities in a system through simulated attacks on GenAI-enabled systems to fortify their defenses before an attack occurs.
The Future Of The CIO
The ongoing evolution of the CIO’s role to be an increasingly strategic advisor cross-functionally across the business and one of the most vocal champions of innovation, agility and organizational resilience will continue into 2025 and beyond.
Advancements in artificial general intelligence will push the CIO role to evolve further as they navigate where human teams, their AI copilots and digital workforces interact and intersect.
As I’ve written about elsewhere, CIOs will also be crucial in helping the business evaluate returns on investments from their AI pilots and adoptions to determine which solutions should stay or go—and, how to unravel patched-together systems from different generations where required. They’ll need to scrutinize new solutions for compatibility with a view for long-term growth and competitiveness while pioneering multicloud strategies, real-time risk management, and ESG-aligned technology road maps to future-proof organizations against emerging challenges.
Through all its iterations, the CIO’s fundamental mission remains: Guide the organization toward resilience and adaptability while executing on business strategy. In our tech-reliant world, that’s never been more critical.
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