The decline of the traditional CIO role
The traditional role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is in transition, and fast. Companies are no longer thinking about IT as a single support function locked in a server room or behind a desk. Technology is now everywhere. It’s in every department, in every product release, embedded in every revenue decision. So, naturally, centralized control over IT systems, the kind that used to define the CIO role, is breaking apart. It’s inefficient to route every tech decision through one office when product teams, marketing, finance, and even HR are making real-time tech choices of their own.
Executives need to act on this. This spread of technology access, and buying power, means business units can now source, implement, and manage their own platforms. SaaS-based services make this easy. As a result, the value in having a central IT gatekeeper is limited. That doesn’t mean the CIO is obsolete, it means the traditional model, based on controlling infrastructure and managing vendor relationships, no longer delivers enough strategic return. The ground has shifted, and many companies are choosing to remove or redefine the CIO position altogether.
This isn’t guesswork. Rajan Goyal, former CTO at Fungible and now CEO at DataPelago, put it clearly: “The traditional CIO role, rooted in vendor management and centralized IT deployment, has been steadily shrinking since the rise of SaaS. Business units now often bypass IT to buy their own tools, reducing the CIO’s direct control.” He’s not wrong. The role simply doesn’t scale the way companies do today.
Hone John Tito, co-founder of Game Host Bros, sees the same trend. He said, “Tech isn’t just managed by one department anymore, it’s everywhere.” He’s right. And in that world, trying to centralize decision-making creates load without adding value.
Transformation rather than elimination of the CIO role
Now let’s be clear: many companies are not firing their CIOs, they’re evolving the function. You don’t eliminate a role because it’s outdated. You reinvent it. And what we’re seeing is the rise of a new type of CIO, one that operates at the executive level with a wider strategic lens. This CIO isn’t here just to maintain systems. They’re here to help scale the business, drive innovation, and ensure tech decisions create real, measurable business outcomes.
It’s important to get this right. A technology leader in your organization should not just speak IT, they should speak business. That’s the version of the CIO that’s emerging. They know how to integrate tech with business strategy and build systems that grow with your company. The work might be less about managing internal databases and more about orchestrating digital capabilities across every customer touchpoint and internal process.
Joy Taylor, managing director at Alliant, captured it well: “I don’t see replacement happening, but rather a transformation…In many organizations, CIOs are taking on expanded responsibilities that reflect their growing strategic importance.”
Jonathan Palley, CEO of QR Codes Unlimited, takes a more operational view: “If the CIO role goes away, it’s mostly going to be about labeling. A CIO’s work is only becoming more central to how most businesses operate.” So even if companies drop the title, the actual responsibilities still need coverage, by a CDO, CTO, or someone else fully integrated into the executive team.
If you’re running a company today, your priority shouldn’t be whether or not you have a CIO. It should be whether someone has a clear mandate to manage the intersection of tech and business. If the answer is no, then you’re running with a blind spot. That’s not just inefficient, it’s dangerous.
Realignment of executive tech roles and overlapping responsibilities
In the past, CIOs had a well-defined place in the executive hierarchy, they owned IT. Today, that clarity is gone. The rise of roles like Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) has blurred boundaries. These roles don’t just supplement the CIO, they’ve absorbed some of the most critical elements of the job. Especially when it comes to data strategy, digital transformation, and customer-facing innovation, it’s the CDO or CTO who’s increasingly in the lead.
That’s not fragmentation, it’s realignment. Companies are redistributing responsibilities to ensure that different parts of the business receive more targeted leadership. A CIO may still exist, but they now share space with other tech executives who often carry overlapping mandates. It’s becoming common to see a CIO managing infrastructure, while the CDO owns digital experience, and the CTO drives engineers and product development. The distinctions are functional, not always hierarchical.
For the C-suite, this means roles need to be clearly scoped. Misalignment at the executive level can slow down growth initiatives or cause internal confusion. You need crisp boundaries for authority and performance metrics. Otherwise, different tech leaders may pull in different directions.
Faisal Masud, now President of WW Digital Services at HP, described his organization’s approach at Staples: “In 2016, when I transitioned from the role of CDO to CTO of Staples, we brought a CIO into my team alongside the CDO and CISO. Even then, the CIO wasn’t positioned to lead digital experiences across the enterprise.” His experience shows how even in large firms, the CIO role has shifted from being the primary technology driver to becoming one part of a broader ecosystem.
This shift doesn’t mean priorities are diluted, it means companies are recognizing how many dimensions of their business are driven by technology. The job titles may vary, but the core requirement remains: strong executive ownership of every critical part of the tech stack.
Diminishing need for CIOs with legacy, technical-only capabilities
The skills that once made CIOs essential, deep technical knowledge, system integration expertise, even in-house development capabilities, aren’t as valuable on their own as they used to be. Technologies today are highly abstracted. You can deploy enterprise-scale platforms with limited in-house resources. With modern SaaS and cloud ecosystems, most infrastructure and applications are handled externally, making traditional technical mastery less relevant to business value creation.
This isn’t a negative reflection on capability, just a redefinition of what’s needed. CIOs who were once prized for deep-platform buildouts and network architecture are finding those skills don’t command the same strategic weight. Companies aren’t looking for infrastructure managers. They’re seeking leaders who understand how technology scales a business, drives customer value, and accelerates transformation. If that’s missing, the position doesn’t just lose relevance, it becomes expendable.
Rebecca Fox, Group CIO at the cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, put it concisely: “If the CIO isn’t driving commercial outcomes or transformation, the role risks being seen as redundant.” That’s the real point. It’s not about whether someone can manage systems, it’s whether their leadership turns technology into business results.
For executives, this should trigger an important reassessment. What kind of technology leadership does your organization need next? If your CIO is primarily focused on uptime and procurement instead of strategic outcomes, then you’re not using that seat correctly. In today’s environment, where competition is being won or lost through speed, agility, and data intelligence, that isn’t sustainable.
Evaluating your CIO, and broader tech leadership, should be tied directly to outcomes. Revenue contribution, operational leverage, risk mitigation, customer engagement. Anything else is noise.
Adapting the CIO role for strategic and commercial impact
The CIO role isn’t disappearing, it’s being redefined to deliver wider impact. In forward-moving companies, CIOs are no longer expected to simply run IT operations. Their mandate is shifting toward enabling growth, managing digital risk, supporting innovation, and improving margins. The job now requires a strategy-driven mindset and a strong connection to commercial outcomes. Technology itself has become a primary lever for scaling businesses, improving customer experience, and optimizing performance. That means CIOs need to function as transformation leaders across the executive team.
Companies that recognize this shift are positioning their CIOs closer to the CEO and CFO, not just the CTO or IT teams. This integration allows tech decisions to directly influence top-line and bottom-line results. That includes supply chain digitization, AI deployment, platform scalability, data monetization, and cybersecurity risk management. Done correctly, this realignment positions the CIO as a growth enabler instead of a systems guardian.
This also makes hiring decisions more complicated, but more essential. CIOs must now understand market dynamics, not just technical architecture. They must align platforms and data frameworks to business goals. CEOs and boards that don’t recalibrate expectations around this role leave themselves vulnerable to stagnating tech strategies that no longer support execution at scale.
Rebecca Fox, Group CIO at NCC Group, summed it up: “This isn’t about cutting IT, it’s about elevating tech leadership into something more strategic and business-critical.” The companies that act on this perspective are positioning themselves for long-term advantage. Those that don’t risk falling behind as the role of technology continues to accelerate across industries.
This is not an academic point, it’s operational. In modern enterprises, the absence of strong, strategic tech leadership correlates directly with strategic failure in digital initiatives. Misdirected technology efforts, delayed integration, poor data interoperability, and weak cybersecurity are all symptoms of ineffective top-level oversight.
Business leaders today should prioritize clarity: Who is responsible for turning technology into differentiated value? If that answer is unclear, you have a gap. And the icon on the organization chart matters less than whether strategic objectives and technical execution are aligned under real leadership. A modern CIO, redefined and integrated, can deliver exactly that.
Key takeaways for decision-makers
- The CIO role is losing central control: As tech purchasing and implementation decentralize across departments, holding onto a traditional, centralized CIO model slows decision-making and reduces strategic value. Leaders should evaluate whether their current CIO structure still delivers impact.
- Evolving, not eliminating: Some companies are retiring the CIO title, but not the function. Executives should focus on reshaping the role to align with business growth, cross-functional leadership, and innovation, not just IT management.
- Executive tech leadership is being reallocated: The rise of CDOs and CTOs is fragmenting traditional CIO responsibilities. Leadership teams must clarify role accountability across digital, data, and infrastructure functions to avoid overlap and inefficiency.
- Legacy tech skills no longer define strategic value: Companies no longer need CIOs to be highly technical operators. Leaders should prioritize strategic, commercially focused tech leadership over hands-on system expertise.
- Strategic CIOs are business drivers: The modern CIO must contribute directly to revenue, resilience, and transformation. Executive teams should embed this role deeper into core decision-making to ensure technology outcomes align with growth goals.
