By Paula Klein

As IT becomes a key driver of business growth and profitability, the challenges CIOs face are more strategic and business-focused than ever before. To support business objectives, CIOs need to manage the elements of the IT economy — the services IT provides to support business processes, as well as the people and infrastructure supporting those services. At the same time, CIOs need to balance service quality, cost and risk. Fundamentally, CIOs have become the stewards of IT economics.

Successful strategies for managing IT to deliver more value to the business vary. Some executives focus on leveraging innovation and governance to ensure that the right investment decisions are being made. Others focus on virtualization and simplifying IT complexity to drive down costs and build a more agile infrastructure.

Three IT executives are successfully improving IT economics to deliver more value to the business: Ahmed Abdelmoteleb at GE Money Australia and New Zealand, Kamal Bherwani of New York City's Health & Human Services (NYC HHS) agency, and Antonio DiCaro of AXA Tech.

Abdelmoteleb, the CTO of GE Money Australia and New Zealand, has, like many of his peers, made it a priority to communicate regularly with his business units. "We put a lot of emphasis on transparency and making sure our business executives have insight into both costs and the value being delivered," he says.

It helps that Abdelmoteleb can build on his department's solid track record, which features four consecutive years of cost savings. As a result, he adds, "we haven't faced pressure to significantly further cut operating expenditures."