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Michael Cross, SVP & CIO, CommScope Holding Company Inc.
The demand for wireless and wired bandwidth continues to be a fundamental driver of CommScope’s business and I’m seeing three trends that have to do with the industries we serve.
The relationship between customers and companies has fundamentally changed from a personal and brick-and-mortar relationship to one that is increasingly digital. This is certainly true in the consumer world and is quickly migrating to the business-to-business world. Customers want to be able to research, configure, order, track and get support for business solutions digitally with consumer-like ease of use. Everyone expects to be able to access the tools and data they need at anytime and anywhere.
In addition to improving person-to-person communications, businesses are moving toward making their networks more intelligent. That means there will be increased investments in data centers and intelligent buildings.
Companies that take advantage of these trends will be able to differentiate themselves from the competition. These trends demonstrate the need for increased bandwidth.
The Complicated Integration between Enterprise Applications
Integration applications from a common vendor can be challenging. Integration between different vendors or between an on-premise application and a cloud application can be even more complicated. Greater standards are required. Hence CommScope employees sit on several standards boards. Commscope is trying to create the proper integration standards for many industries to use.
The second is the lack of platform convergence for end users. Years ago the typical end user had two main devices—a mobile phone and desktop. Today, most end users carry three devices — a smart phone, a tablet and a laptop. For a user that has to produce content, a tablet cannot fully replace today’s notebook.
Challenges in the Role Of CIO
The real mission of an IT organization is to be viewed as a trusted advisor to the company. This way you can help grow and transform a company so it can reach its full potential. To have the privilege of being viewed as a trusted advisor, one must establish trust and that comes from meeting commitments — delivering quality on time, keeping everything running and meeting and exceeding service levels. All of these must be accomplished while balancing cost and security constraints.
Innovations in Technology
CommScope understands how important innovation is to our organization. In addition to establishing innovation as a key competence, CommScope focuses heavily on ensuring the team is trained on the latest technologies and solutions. That includes solutions outside of the industries we serve.