CIO: Hottest IT roles in information architecture, SaaS integration

Shortly before Ramon Baez took over as CIO at HP this month I spoke to him in his role as CIO at Kimberly-Clark. This week's Computerworld Q&A interview with Baez ended with his statement that the migration of enterprise apps to SaaS is diminishing some traditional IT roles. That's depressing. But what readers didn't hear about are the new opportunities: The skill sets and roles Baez says are going to be in the highest demand.

"We need to retool [IT staff] for what their next role is going to be," he said. So exactly what are those roles, and what new skill sets are in demand at Kimberly-Clark? Here's more of what Baez had to say:

Our people are becoming information architects or they’re becoming integrators of SaaS. We still have a ton of legacy and on-premise systems, and I don’t see that going away. But the future will continue to go toward SaaS.

Integrating with our SaaS providers is a significant skill.  And as we get into analytics and business intelligence and user-centered design, people who are really good with information and understanding insights into the information and what value it can bring will be incredibly important.

A few years ago, people had to be really good with middleware. Now they have to be great with middleware, with SOA. People don’t have to be technologists in those areas, but they do need to know how it works and what information adds value.

With mobility, we will focus less on the big, large application systems and more on the micro apps and how you add value with those.

Finally, we need people who are bilingual, who can speak the language of the business and the language of IT and can cross over. Those are the people who will be the most valuable.