Computerworld - February 27, 2012

OPINION
SCOT FINNIE
Calculated Risk-Takers
This year’s
Premier 100
know what
needs to be
done and take
significant risks
to put their
companies
ahead.
THE ANNUAL Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference and the accompany- ing special issue of Computerworld are among this magazine’s proudest achievements. This is the Premier 100 program’s 13th consecutive year, and with the addition of 2012’s class of honorees, the list of
Scot Finnie is
Computerworld’s
editor in chief.
You can contact
him at sfinnie@
computerworld.com
and follow him on
Twitter (@ScotFinnie).

Premier 100 alumni now includes 1,300 of the
sharpest, most successful senior leaders in IT.
Attending the Premier 100 event is always a
thrill. It’s a warm, friendly atmosphere, and in-
novative ideas flow all around you. That’s because
CIOs and other senior I T executives are incredibly
talented individuals who, in this day and age, need
to speak at least three languages: driving business
advantage, management excellence and knowing
the best ways to harness technology.
This year’s honorees are responsible for an
average of 709 IT sta;ers, and their companies
employ a total of 1,449 IT professionals on average.
Almost half (48%) of the honorees said their IT
budgets had increased in the previous 12 months,
and 43% said their I T sta;s had expanded during
that time. Premier 100 IT leaders manage sizable
IT investments, most of which exceed $50 million.
What are they working on? Their top priori-
ties for 2012 are application development, data
management/business analytics, security, cloud
computing and virtualization.
If you’ve read Julia King’s cover story, “The
Rewards of Risk-Taking” (page 16), you know that
the overarching theme of this year’s Premier 100 is
smart IT leaders knowing what needs to be done
and taking risks to put their companies ahead.
What’s more, they made those bold moves in 2011,
when the U.S.’s emergence from the recession was
anything but assured. And yet, they succeeded.
One Premier 100 honoree who took a risk was
Waste Management CIO Puneet Bhasin. He pro-
posed installing ruggedized tablet computers on
every truck in the company’s fleet to capture real-
time data. The goal was to improve operational
e;ciency and customer service. But the invest-
ment was steep — hundreds of millions of dollars.
He also had to convince his CEO and the executive
board that the investment would yield a return.