Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 27 | Page 7

EDITOR’S NOTE W elcome to the latest edition of Intelligent CIO Europe. On this month’s cover we feature John Court, Chief Information Officer at haulage giant, Eddie Stobart. The company has long been iconic in the UK and it is also extremely well-known across Europe. But like many businesses, it has evolved to meet the changing needs of its customers and the evolution of Information Technology is part of this process. In our story, we look at Eddie Stobart’s deployment of a Boomi solution to bring far greater speed, efficiency and agility to its supply chain and partner network. “For a business with the growth and ambition of Eddie Stobart, we needed a better approach to integration that would bring more speed and agility to our business,” John Court told us. “We needed a platform that was flexible so we could support our customers’ preferences and constraints for integrating and communicating among our different systems. As an always-on business, high availability was critical to us, but it had to be cost-effective.” For more details, including comments from Vince Sparks, Director of IT at Eddie Stobart, turn to page 58. In this month’s ‘Trending’, we look at a survey from UKCloud which reveals why www.intelligentcio.com public sector organisations are turning to multi-cloud. The survey reports the results of 300 plus senior public sector IT professionals and business leaders and reveals the challenges around cloud adoption. Alex Hilton, Chief Executive at the Cloud Industry Forum, told us: “We have been monitoring the adoption of cloud-based services across the UK for the past 10 years. We have seen unprecedented change take place in that time, with many companies now realising the potential of cloud services helping them fulfil their Digital Transformation goals. These journeys may have started a long time ago, but they are far from over: rapidly evolving business challenges mean that diversity and collaboration are necessary to move forward. A cloud-led strategy must be at the heart of any Digital Transformation.” You can find out more about the results of the survey on page 25. In this edition’s ‘CIO Opinion’, we look at how CIOs are earning the trust of CEOs and board members by combining their technical expertise with business awareness and strategic thinking. advisors to CEOs and are helping to shape their organisations’ growth strategies. He says: “This change in mindset is leading companies to turn to IT to not just solve system errors and implement operational improvements, but to leverage technology in ways that support new corporate initiatives and help generate new revenue streams – and at the heart of such transformation lies the CIO.” As usual, we have all your favourite features and a comprehensive news roundup from across the region. You can also read daily news updates on our website at www. intelligentcio.com/eu/ And please don’t forget if you would like to get in touch, please email me at alix@lynchpinmedia.co.uk I’d like to wish you a good month ahead and please enjoy the read! Alix Pressley Editor Phil Richards, CSO at Ivanti, argues that CIOs have established themselves as trusted INTELLIGENTCIO 7