"By 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO." (Gartner)

Gartner has published a study that details a tectonic shift ahead for marketing organizations.The idea is simple.- Typically, CIOs report to the CFO or an Operations VP. As a result, IT departments tend to be focused on the enterprise level issues with optimization/cost containment as key initiatives.- At the same time, IT has become the great marketing and sales enabler.If Gartner's prediction seems too far fetched, consider this.In January, Motorola promoted CMO, Eduardo Conrado, to a new position, Senior Vice President - Marketing & IT.As Mr. Conrado explained in an Ad Age interview, "...as more companies are centered on the customers, then IT should also be supercharging the customer engagements with the company... Marketing teams have been working in digital fields for the last decade, overseeing websites, content management, social platforms, databases, the collaborative tools we use internally, and we are familiar with analytics... It is a natural fit."