Take the CIO Turing Test

By Geoff Langos

Watching IBM's Watson beat (OK, annihilate) two human contestants got me thinking about Alan Turing’s 1950 hypothesis: “Can machines think?" How can we, as technology stewards of our businesses, learn from what we observed last week?

If I’m building Watson, I’m watching a lot of Jeopardy; If I support a call center, I’m listening to a lot of calls; If I’m supporting a hotel, I’m spending time observing guest behavior. This is the CIO Turing test: Can the person in charge of business technology translate it into a competitive advantage? Technology strategy is about investment choices being fully dependent on the needs of the business, not the “latest shiny thing."

This is why CIOs must immerse themselves in the details of the problems they intend for technology to solve. Can your CIO actually take a call from a customer and handle it? How about confirming a reservation or cancelling an order?

Turing’s hypothesis, applied to CIOs, is a much more relevant question: Do today’s CIOs understand enough detail to think strategically and harness the power of machines in ways that positively impact how the business thinks?

Geoff Langos is vice president of Information Technology at Vonage . He is responsible for everything related to corporate infrastructure and systems, including information security and PCI compliance, billing, corporate databases, data warehousing, financial systems, HR Systems and more. He is also a member of the 2010-11 B/OSS Live! Conference & Businessplex Advisory Board.