CIO In The Know – AI or not to AI. That is the question…and how.

It seems every conversation touches on AI. AI is everywhere. At the same time, CIOs and CEOs are growing in their fatigue with AI conversations. Part of the problem is that vendors are adding ‘AI’ to everything and making it hard to understand the true value. Almost two years ago, I predicted that AI fatigue would be coming and what’s next. Sure enough, we are starting to see that play out.

Don’t get me wrong. AI is absolutely one of the most exciting and valuable opportunities for enterprises. How we think about it and how we leverage it is evolving and maturing.

As the conversation matures, there is a dichotomy happening. The more mature conversations are evolving to talk about outcomes. Business outcomes…not technology outcomes. The awesome power in AI is more than automation of a process. It will demonstrably change how we work, think and interact with technology. The less mature conversations are largely taking a more tactical path that limits the potential outcome and therefore value.

What’s News?

CIOs are rethinking how and where they leverage AI. I’ve talked with numerous CIOs over the past few months that are still struggling to find the value in AI. Recent survey data shows that CEO’s believe that only 25% of AI projects are proving out their ROI. That’s one of the more positive outcomes I’ve seen. Other surveys are showing as low as single digits. At the same time, those same CEOs believe they will see positive ROI in the next two years. Optimism is still strong among CEOs and CIOs.

At the same time, we need to have an honest conversation about where the opportunity is and isn’t with AI. In a recent CIO Think Tank survey, 34.5% of CIOs cited lack of clear ROI as the biggest barrier when realizing value from AI.

In the last CIO In The Know newsletter, I mentioned how AI agents are causing a cybersecurity renaissance. Since then, AI agents are getting more sophisticated and creating renaissances in other areas from infrastructure to sophisticated enterprise applications.

Who will be *THE* AI platform?

Vendors looking to seize the agentic AI opportunity are clamoring to be *the* AI platform that enterprises build their agentic architecture on top of. It is a juicy and sticky opportunity. A few vendors bubbling to the surface:

• AWS: Combining data and tooling, AWS continues their drive to provide more sophisticated solutions for agentic AI.
• Google Cloud: Google opens the door to realizing early the importance of integration through their work on MCP and A2A.
• SAP: SAP has a wealth of business data to build the tooling on top of. Those insights are gold.
• Salesforce: Salesforce is sitting on core data around the customer. With CX being one of the ‘big three’ initiatives, paring AI with CX and customer data provides interesting opportunities.
• Servicenow: Servicenow recently purchased Moveworks and Logik.ai. While both are still in the works, Servicenow is clearly moving into a position to leverage their wealth of customer operational data with innovative tooling.

Who else would you add to this list?

The prize for the ‘winner’ in this massive land grab is huge! Similar to cloud, I believe the spoils will largely go to one primary provider with secondary and tertiary providers in the mix. Integration via MCP and A2A will be key. The caution will be those that try and create a walled garden as a lock-in mechanism.

CIO Water Cooler Talk

In my CIO circles, our conversations are largely focused on a few things:

• Getting value from AI
• Understanding how AI and people interact
• How business needs to change and evolve…and therefore so will IT
• Governance around data

The evolving tools are just part of the equation. CIOs are still facing a mountain of priorities coming from all directions. That being said, AI is still top of the list for many. Now, the focus is shifting to value.

In a recent CIO Think Tank survey the two areas delivering the most measurable value from AI were ‘operations and automation’ (27.6%) and ‘customer experience’ (24.1%). There was a sharp dropoff beyond those two.

Aside from looking inward, CIOs are increasingly restless, and many CIOs I speak with are looking to make a move. One fundamental issue is driving this groundswell: mismatched value. A disconnect exists between expectations, value, capabilities and/or direction between the CIO, the IT organization, how technology is leveraged within the organization and how the leadership team perceives the CIO, their organization and the role of technology.

Other dynamics driving change include return to office and priorities. I fully expect this turmoil to increase over time as we find our new way to operate, organize and lead.

Latest Content

Since the last newsletter, several new posts went up.

• The Velocity Chain: Creating the flywheel for business acceleration
• Watch Your Flank: New Entrants Sidestep Competition
• Four Key Takeaways from SAP Sapphire
• Google Gemini CLI takes enterprises further toward autonomous AI operations
• HPE Embraces Agentic AI and Signals a Power Shift in Enterprise Ops
• HPE closes deal with Juniper Networks and what it means for CIOs
• Cisco Just Redefined AI Security – And It’s Coming for Your Threat Stack

New episodes for the CIO In The Know podcast are coming soon! You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where ever you listen to podcasts.

Upcoming Events

July is largely the calm before the storm where I get to spend a few weeks home and away from an airport. I have a busy travel schedule already forming for the rest of the year and well into 2026.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been presenting to executive audiences a presentation titled “AI is no longer a pilot – it’s a power shift”. The feedback has been very positive and looking forward to several more presentations already booked! If you want to learn more, just reach out.

What’s your take?

We just passed the halfway mark in 2025. The first half was very disruptive, and the second half is likely to continue that pace. 

Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear from you and your perspective!

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