Marina Levinson, the founding CEO of CIO Advisory Group, shared her insights into the IT market in a recent interview with Jeff Frick and Wikibon’s Dave Vellante.

Levinson has been advising business and technology leaders for over 25 years, so she knows a thing or two about the industry. She made sure to highlight the unprecedented velocity of innovation at the start of the interview before listing the two biggest mega-trends she’s tracking for her clients: cloud computing and mobile.

Levinson pointed out that the cloud is no longer an emerging trend. She believes that CIOs must invest in cloud-based services to keep their organizations on the same playing field as the competition. Mobile and the consumerization of IT are also here to stay – even traditional data center vendors are acknowledging this fact. NetApp recently launched an iOS app that enables end-users to view data from their mobile device or tablet without having to worry about security or compliance.

Investing in new technologies is a key objective that CIOs must address to maintain their companies’ competitive advantage. Levinson says that the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the cloud enable organizations to focus on the development of business capabilities that have a direct impact on productivity and operational efficiency.
Shadow IT, a term that describes the unauthorized consumption of technology, is another phenomenon that CIOs have to tackle. In Levinson’s personal experience, strengthening relationships with shadow IT providers is a far more effective course of action than appeasing the IT department.

She concludes the interview by providing a valuable piece of advice for vendors: prepare to ask hard questions. She also stressed the importance of researching prospective customers before heading into the conference room.

Check out the video below to see the full interview.