I help CIO’s turn fragmented IT spend data into actionable insights that align technology investments with strategic business goals. With 25+ years in enterprise tech and two successful exits, I’ve seen how the right mix of analytics and leadership can transform IT from a cost center into a growth engine.
At Altios.ai, we built a platform to:
•	Consolidate spend data from 100+ vendors into a single command center.
•	Automate reporting to save 15–20 hours per month
•	Prevent unexpected auto-renewals with proactive contract tracking and alerts
•	Identify 12–18% in immediate cost optimizations.

Before Altios.ai, I founded DocSkiff Inc. (acquired by JAGGAER) and Bimarian Inc. (acquired by Standav), and held leadership roles at Oracle, LiquidHub (acquired by Capgemini), CyberBills, IntelliGuard, and Borland—scaling global tech teams to 350+ engineers.

My Mission: Transform how CIOs manage IT investments, so they deliver strategic business value—and get the recognition they deserve for driving innovation and efficiency.

As we wrap up the year, the Forbes CIO Next List highlights a clear pattern across industries: CIO impact is increasingly measured by outcomes, not activity.
Looking ahead to 2026, two priorities stand out—AI cost governance and decision-grade intelligence. As AI moves into production, CIOs are already seeing the consequences of weak controls (including real cases of $40K+ AWS bills from runaway LLM usage). The next phase isn’t more experimentation—it’s economic discipline.
https://lnkd.in/ggZG748g

Siva Pullabhotla

Founder & CEO at Altios.ai | Elevating CIO Success with Comprehensive IT Spend Visibility | 2x Successful Exits | Trusted by Fortune 500 IT Leaders

Each year, the Forbes CIO Next List spotlights technology leaders recognized for measurable enterprise impact—and the patterns are increasingly clear. 

In 2025, the signal became hard to ignore: the CIO role is no longer defined by “running IT or KTLO”. It’s defined by compounding business outcomes—speed, resilience, customer impact, and measurable productivity. 

That’s also what many “CIO Next” recognitions tend to reward: evidence of impact, not activity. 

What 2025 made explicit: 

Outcomes > projects 
Credibility is now measured in cycle time, cost-to-serve, reliability, risk reduction—not “deliverables shipped.” 
Modernization is a system, not a program 
Consolidate, simplify, retire legacy, and reinvest—repeatably. (Data center consolidation + legacy retirement shows up often. 
AI moved from pilots to production—and ROI got real and so is LLMs security 
As AI scales, so do the questions: unit cost, duplication, governance, and value realization. CISOs are worried about security and governance and LLM injections.  
Security and resilience are value narratives 
Risk reduction is now board-level value, not a defensive footnote. 
The constraint underneath all four: IT economics. 
Most enterprises still can’t answer, quickly and credibly, what they spend on IT—by service, owner, vendor, or outcome. When spend data is fragmented across budgets, POs, invoices, contracts/renewals, and services/talent systems, decision velocity collapses. 

What’s next in 2026: 

Decision-grade transparency (not more dashboards) - What-if questions & Answers enabled by Conversational Analytics grounded in clean data 
AI cost governance as a first-class discipline 
Modernization funding loops: optimize → reinvest → reduce run-cost → repeat 
CIO–CFO alignment becomes a competitive advantage 

This is why ITFM is evolving from “finance tooling” into a core CIO operating capability. 

#CIO #ITFM #FinOps #AI #DigitalTransformation #TechLeadership #SpendOptimization

IT transformation is a maturity curve, not a one-time jump. Each level builds on the previous one, creating the foundation for higher-order business impact.

Not all “IT transformation” creates enterprise value. 

One pattern shows consistently when you study CIOs recognized for measurable impact —not activity. 
They don’t treat transformation as a single motion. 
They understand there are three distinct levels, each with very different outcomes. 

Level 1: Technology Implementation 
Necessary. But limited. 
This is where most IT organizations stop—modernizing systems, improving efficiency, and strengthening resilience. Important work, but it rarely changes how the business experiences IT. 

Level 2: Product & Operating Model Transformation 
This is where credibility is earned. 
Spend is mapped to services, products, and owners—not just cost centers. 
Trade-offs become explicit. Priorities sharpen up. Decision latency drops. 

Level 3: Business Model Transformation 
This is the hardest—and most avoided. 
Here, IT becomes a lever for growth, resilience, and margin. 
Spend decisions shift profit pools, not just budgets. 

What’s striking: 
👉 The most impactful CIOs don’t jump blindly to Level 3. 
👉 They build decision-grade visibility first, then deliberately move up the stack. 
In 2026, this matters more than ever. 
AI volatility, services opacity, and board-level scrutiny are forcing a shift: 
From cost tracking → to value orchestration. 

The CIOs who stand out aren’t running IT better. 
They’re allocating capital better—with clarity, speed, and accountability. 
That’s the real transformation most enterprises underestimate.

taplio

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