By Business & Finance 
Pictured: Peter Lantry, Managing Director of Equinix Ireland
The Business & Finance CIO 100 Index 2023, in association with Equinix, was launched on the 31st May, recognising the top 100 Digital Leaders working across some of the most innovative companies in Ireland today.
The Index was launched alongside an exclusive event that kicked off day one of Dublin Tech Summit 2023.
As the CIO 100 Index 2023 was launched last Wednesday, May 31st, on the Business & Finance website, in association with Equinix, digital leaders from a broad selection of industries took their seats at the Minerva Suite in the RDS Dublin for an exclusive event that also successfully started activities for Dublin Tech Summit 2023.
Peter Lantry, Managing Director of Equinix Ireland began proceedings in earnest with an address to attendees. Lantry, who has a background of twenty years working in the energy industry with companies like Hitachi Energy and EirGrid, noted the importance of CIOs, who he said have helped companies manage access, power, data needs and requirements, and artificial intelligence in turbulent times.
“I have nothing but admiration for CIOs,” he said. “And the work that they do to manage this really dynamic environment that they’re working in. It’s not easy.”
Panel discussion
After Lantry’s address, Joan Mulvihill, Digitalisation & Sustainability Lead, Siemens, moderated a panel discussion between Noelle Watts, Chief Information Technology Officer at Ornua, Steve Martin, Technology Director at Bord Gáis Energy, and Ashling Cunningham, Chief Information Officer at Uisce Éireann.
Sustainability, inflation, talent retention – how do CIOs navigate and balance?
Mulvihill asked panellists that, given increased focus on sustainability, with the rising costs of inflation, the expense of technology, and the difficulties of talent retention, how they manage to strike a healthy balance at the companies in which they work.
Watts answered: “All of us in the room have been through Brexit, and that brought a huge amount of challenge with it […] If you look at the last number of years, we’ve been hit by unprecedented challenges that were very, very unexpected […] The pandemic, the interruptions to supply chains […] the war in Ukraine, and all of those other challenges.
If you look at the last number of years, we’ve been hit by unprecedented challenges
“The one thing I would say that we have had to bring to the table is the ability to be really, really agile, and to be able to deal with all these challenges as they hit us, and we have very much been through transformation in the last number of years, so there has been a flexibility that change has brought to the table […] I think resilience is very important, and agility, and building a desire within the team to succeed.
“[What we brought] to the table was a very direct partnership, bringing IT from a legacy back office function right up through to very strong aligned partnership with the business […] Our team and the team that report into me, they aren’t just IT professionals. I have a very multi-disciplinary team working for me.”
[What we brought] to the table was a very direct partnership, bringing IT from a legacy back office function right up through to very strong aligned partnership with the business.
Decarbonisation
Martin spoke about the impact of the energy crisis, arguing for the business incentive to decarbonise. “From a business perspective, the energy is more and more of a commodity,” he said.
The service offering that Martin and his team can provide to customers includes “[looking] at your usage and [saying], ‘if you can move to a heat pump, then we think you can save X, this is the right power for you, and we can install that,’ so we’re investing significantly in our service […] Historically, we just repaired gas boilers, [now] we want to be a one-stop-shop to help people decarbonise.”
Pictured (L-R): Joan Mulvihill, Digitalisation & Sustainability Lead, Siemens; Ashling Cunningham, Chief Information Officer at Uisce Éireann; Steve Martin, Technology Director at Bord Gáis Energy; Noelle Watts, Chief Information Technology Officer at Ornua
Burnout of talent
Cunningham spoke about employee burnout. “I don’t see the term ‘burnout’ as an individual issue,” she said. “Maybe in the past, people felt there were particular individuals we looked at and were burnt out. I think in the last number of years it has become […] a cultural issue.
“The last thing you look at at night is your phone, and it’s the first thing you look at in the morning. We are constantly on, constantly switched on […] For an individual, [they become] fatigued […] for an organisation, it [affects] productivity […] I do think we are seeing a rebalance in organisations about stretching people to the next level. The challenge is, how do you do that in a hybrid working environment?
“The warmth is not there because of the pressure we’re constantly under. What are organisations doing about it? […] It’s around the policies that we have in place, it’s around mental health awareness, it’s around digital doctors, there’s a whole raft of things organisations are doing.”
READ MORE:
CIO 100 Index 2023 in association with Equinix — Part 1
CIO 100 Index 2023 in association with Equinix — Part 2
