'The cognitive enterprise' is the CIO's next frontier

While CIOs are in the midst of transforming their companies into digital enterprises, experts have begun to sound a new alarm bell: The next wave of disruption has already started. Rick Davidson, founder and CEO at Cimphoni, a consultancy focused on the intersection of business and IT, is one such expert. He calls the next wave "the cognitive enterprise," where technology systems that can understand, learn and even reason will be able to meet customer expectations before customers know they have an expectation that needs to be met. He pointed to technologies such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon Echo -- the first generation of virtual concierges -- as examples. "We're going to move through the digital enterprise pretty fast," Davidson said during his presentation on the cognitive enterprise at the recent Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium in Madison, Wis.