The pace of change in the IT industry seems to quicken by the day, forcing organizations to adapt and evolve right along with their customers.

The shift from the traditional focus on delivering technology and support to a new model that emphasizes building and maintaining deeper customer relationships is putting significant stress on IT leaders.

In a recent blog for Corpmagazine.com, Vince DeLuca, CEO of Logicalis, argues the time has come for a new kind of IT leader. The new leaders are able to handle the tried-and-true technologies of the last several years, and are ready to select and manage new disruptive tech, including cloud, big data analytics and telepresence.

The new leaders, DeLuca writes, are able to "act as a lynchpin between business requirements and technology capabilities, between services capabilities and the myriad services and solution providers who deliver these to the organization."

No longer is the IT leader just a tech guy or gal. He or she is what DeLuca calls a "services broker" who can focus outside the organization for IT services and can manage a portfolio of services that live off-premises and come from multiple vendors.

"They must focus on delivering the best 360-degree user experience," DeLuca writes. "They must deliver service, value and differentiation, not just speeds and feeds. Traditional key performance indicators… will still be there, but will new measurements like increased business agility, improved customer (user experience) and time to innovation."

Read DeLuca's entire blog here.