I recently had the opportunity to attend the NCS Madison CIO Strategy Meeting in Chicago, where I moderated a roundtable disc on “Enabling and Managing Innovation within Your IT Service & Delivery Organization.” The panel focused on current CIO challenges, trends in IT and barriers to innovation, and was attended by corporate IT leaders from among the top companies in the U.S.

The discussion was highly interactive and quite informative—here are my key takeaways from the discussion:

• Every CIO that participated in the panel has moved at least part of their IT infrastructure to the cloud.
• In migrating IT services to data centers and the cloud, it has become clear to CIOs that the underlying network is a critical piece of the IT delivery infrastructure; however, many lack the required networking expertise within their organizations to support it.
• Most CIOs use a hybrid of agile and waterfall development for new systems deployment.
• Innovation is a big focus in many IT organizations; however, the focus is more on people and processes than on technology
• With their migration to cloud services, some CIOs have determined they need to develop or hire experts in architecture and vendor management, rather than actual developers.
• The development of a strategic systems architecture is very important to optimize network performance across the company and minimize the impact of “rogue IT”.
• CIOs are still struggling to gain alignment with the rest of the business and are hiring team members who understand the bigger business picture – and who are better able to communicate with and manage stakeholders.

Recent research from Comcast Business and IDG confirms that what these CIOs are experiencing is reflective of what’s happening in enterprise organizations across the country.