Board members equate to stock-options; reducing it by one equates to more of the pot to go around: most board members and COO/CFO's would just love to relegate IT (CIO) to the 'mere utility' bucket. But comparing 115/230VAC to an IT infrastructure is banal ignorance at best, howling arrogance (based on greed) at worst.
Future-state SOA, where a mere drag-drop of the mouse (or Wii/Natal/'Minority Report') will shuffle all the data and apps according to business changes, totally absent of IT involvement. Panacea, ok... but... not yet.
Note that the slicker the interface on top, the more complex the infrastructure, and/or data, or management systems to control it all simmers underneath. Only takes one fundamental SNAFU and your business is toast. Try getting anyone else on the board other than a CIO with his techie hand on the tiller to do anything other than splutter 'breach SLA!' and 'sue the bastids' if the wheels come off.
As for "push the implementation of new services to end users"... as long as the drag+drop works; seamlessly; every time.
The scenario of: we're the Finance department, and you internal IT bods charge too much: I think we'll outsource our stuff to a SaaS because we are GenY and we know IT better than you old farts... bring it on; let's see how you manage design/transition/transformation/integration/service lifecycle, as well as doing your spreadsheets.
Agreed that CIOs need to be in the driving seat of the new frontier of IT; value-add to grow the business rather than service-provide to sustain it.
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