"I am excited about where IT is today and feel it is going to be even better tomorrow. If I'm right, then IT organizations will need to embrace it"

JAMES RINALDI
CIO
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

James has direct management responsibility over JPL’s Institutional Computing and Information Services Office. Jim has more than 25 years of experience with information systems.
Jim has a bachelor of arts in computer science from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. He has successfully completed executive and leadership development programs at the University of Maryland in College Park. Jim is an award recipient of the Federal 100 – the top executives from government, industry and academia, who had the greatest impact on the information systems community.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

1. One of the big challenges is integrating consumer intended services into the enterprise, for example, iTunes. Another one is Amazon cloud services.It is difficult to use these type of services into the enterprise for chargeback and allocations etc.
2. Developing applications for mobility across multiple platforms. This includestraining developers for new languages and techniques.
3. Taking advantage of big data tools, capabilities and training. This has great
potential.
4. Cybersecurity advances while threats increase. Especially advanced persistent and more sophisticated threats. My wish list would include solutions for those challenges and better awareness by suppliers of how to work in the enterprise.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

Finding information in the enterprise is a complex problem since repositories are now more available than ever. A more complete search capability is needed. The current solutions while
improving still don't get us there.

A pragmatic problem is getting iPhones working with Microsoft Exchangecalendaring. New releases are not always kept in sync for these products. The customer is often caught in the middle. If Apple and Microsoft could work closer on this, I feel it could be solved.

As mentioned before, cyber security is something where the threats change constantly and there are a myriad of tools that need to be acquired and integrated. Training staff and end users is key but always a challenge.

Technology Trends Impacting Enterprise Business Environment

I feel the big data trend is real and offers fantastic opportunities for us. It is a natural fit for JPL since we process and analyze so much data. We are excited about the possibilities.

While we have implemented cloud solutions at JPL, the trend I'm looking at is how to use this to consolidate data centers and reduce physical space.

One other trend (we call it so) is how IT impacts human behavior and vice a versa. Innovation across the enterprise comes from anywhere and IT is involved in everything. Therefore, we in IT need to make sure we understand that and look for solutions.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

It is now very clear that IT is involved in everything and the role of the CIO is more of an enabler, change agent and collaborator than before. IT organizations are becoming more consultative to the business and working closer than ever to solve problems.

Lessons learned as a CIO

I really feel IT is so important to organizations that it is necessary for IT people to engage more with what the user experiences vs. what they think they want. The days of getting requirements and then building (or buying) a solution has passed for the most part. The word enterprise sometimes implies one size fits all. In this day of having "apps" at your fingertips, it seems old ways of monolithic and large systems are over. I am excited about where IT is today and feel it is going to be even better tomorrow. If I'm right, then IT organizations will need to embrace it.