Cynthia Stoddard, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of NetApp, shared her thoughts on innovation in IT during her presentation at the 2014 Chief Information Officer Leadership Forum in Boston on March 27. In her presentation, “Innovation in IT (A Practitioner’s Perspective),” Stoddard noted that IT professionals must do things quicker and faster than ever before to help their organizations succeed in today’s competitive global market.

Stoddard said that her organization focuses on data and the adoption of technologies. Because NetApp’s data footprint has expanded over the past few years, Stoddard said, her organization has been able to collect data from a variety of sources. In addition, Stoddard stated that her organization prioritizes the adoption of technologies because new solutions and tools are becoming available every day: “We have to be quicker with our technology adoption. The cycles are a lot shorter than they’ve ever been in the past and we need to ready our organizations to be able to adapt and bring that value to the organization.”

According to Stoddard, cost pressure and budget are major issues in her organization. To overcome these issues, Stoddard said, her organization constantly searches for ways to balance the cost of new technologies with their agility. Stoddard noted that IT professionals should be proactive to highlight the importance of IT in their respective organizations as well: “When you think about innovation, I like to think about it in terms of IT being relevant and increasing the relevancy of IT within the organization. IT could take a backseat and wait for the business to bring things to them, but I actually don’t believe in that. I think we need to be an equal partner and we need to bring to bear ideas back to the business in order to increase business value.”