As the market for cloud computing matures, there is growing awareness of its potential among chief executives and finance directors. However, that awareness tends to be based on three misconceptions: firstly, that the CIO should lead the organisation’s approach to cloud; secondly, that there will be significant legal, security and regulatory obstacles; and thirdly, that the cloud is only about IT cost savings. Each of these is wrong.
First, CIOs cannot give impartial advice on cloud. A business that transfers its IT to the cloud will receive those services in a very different way, and that will almost certainly require a smaller IT department. Speaking recently at the London School of Economics, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suggested that increased use of cloud services could lead to job losses of 10 to15 per cent across the worldwide IT industry.
The shift towards cloud is also creating concern for traditional enterprise IT hardware vendors. Big players are hearing some of their clients talk about adoption of cloud-based IT services at a pace that would devastate their existing hardware revenue streams.
They are responding by offering ‘private cloud’ solutions that play perfectly to typical CIO sensitivities. These private clouds, or pre-integrated units of hardware and software from the same vendor, are very attractive at first glance as they address perceived security and confidentiality risks by keeping the hardware and its management on site. This approach creates the illusion to casual observers that cloud is being adopted but preserves the complexity, and size, of the in-house IT organisation.
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Source: ft.com
By: Chris Burn and Conrad Thompson
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