"People see you as the chief infrastructure officer. What people also see is you are moving into chief integration officer," says Wang. "But what CIOs traditionally have not done a good job with is really the other two -- the chief intelligence officer and the chief innovation officer."

The first two roles represent the 'traditional' roles of the CIOs who find their budgets reduced, but the last two, which Wang describes as 'shadow IT', might involve looking at the cloud and renegotiating contracts.

Wang says CIOs can deliver on all these four roles by upgrading their skills.

A shadow CIO-like organisation can emerge on the business side to fill the roles of chief intelligence and chief innovation officer, says Wang. CIOs can also appoint "lieutenants" with one or more of these functions.

"You make the shadow side not necessarily go away but you can empower them to be successful," says Wang. "You need to at least give the business enough rope to move two steps ahead of you, but also not cause you to be two steps behind. Which means you are working in parallel [with them]."