The morning sessions consisted of CIO panels, with the discussions centering on how they addressed the growth and results within today’s environment, and their perceived roles and responsibilities.

The consensus was the following:

A-    Cost cutting activities, while on-going, seem to have run their course. While this is always on everyone’s agenda and reviewed with senior management, the focus has changed.  The change that is being demanded now by senior management and the stakeholders is “we need growth!”  As stated, cost-cutting has gone so far and to maintain or become profitable enterprises have to either start growing or continue growing.

B-    Successful or smart companies are making key investments during these troubled times.  Instead of pulling back and waiting for a sunny day, they are investing, mainly for growth and to stay ahead of their competition.

C-    Outsourcing:  CIOs and their partners are taking a very hard look at all functions within the enterprises and deciding, from a business point of view, which functions can be outsourced.   They claim this addresses three issues, internal cost savings, improved efficiencies and the ability to deploy resources into core capabilities.

D-    New ideas for growth are not always coming from technology. Changing workflows or processes or working with partners and vendors are producing positive results.

As for the evolving role and responsibilities of a CIO, again while they all agreed it is challenging, the evolution seems to be causing a “split personality.” The key characteristics for the future CIOs are the following:

• They have to be an “enabler” versus a “driver.”  A driver does not always get buy-in and thus projects might not meet their goals and objectives versus an enabler who gets everyone involved and the CIO is seen as making things happen.
• CIO must be in a collaborative role NOT “here-it-is” stance.  So the challenge is to foster change but in a supportive and collaborative way.
• Provide innovative contributions to the enterprise.  CIOs are being asked to drive growth and thus chartered to find new and hopefully unique ways to move the company forward.  The challenge here is that fundamental activities like infrastructure and mail systems must be rock solid and efficient before a CIO can look at making innovative activities. Thus the balance of tactical activities versus developing new functions or methods.
•  Is a CIO also the CTO?  There was no right or wrong answer here but everyone agreed that the functions were needed and it was more of a company philosophy then a hard and fast rule.  Some thought the CTO should report to the CIO, while others thought that you needed an “independent” group looking at technologies
• The key characteristic, and this was unanimous, is that CIO must have business acumen.  Some even went so far to say that in their search for CIOs that they considered technical expertise secondary (one CIO was not from an IT environment at all!).  The point being is that to help drive the company forward one has to understand the lines of businesses and support the success from a business point of view, not just a technological vision.

In summary the CIO of the future (actually today) is literally in the middle!  He or she must be tactical but innovative, an enabler but is able drive things to completion, collaborative but lead in certain areas and most important have solid business knowledge/ understanding with great collaborative skills.

So if you are a CIO, how prepared are you for the next challenges or if you are a member of management is you CIO prepared for these challenges?

RHL 05/25/10

What is cloud computing? Well right off, there are various and numerous definitions. In the same breath you will hear about, hosted solutions, managed solutions, virtualization, Internet Service Providers (ISP), Software as a Service (SaaS), grid computing, utility computing, security, and platforms, just to name a few.  We will discuss all of these and more in later postings, but first what is most important is seeing if cloud computing is right for you. So in the spirit of simplicity, here are definitions for cloud computing.

First a definition from Wikipedia:  

Cloud computing is Internet- (“cloud-”) based development and use of computer technology (“computing”). In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer have need of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.

Whoa that was clear!  Try this one:

Cloud computing consists of shared computing resources that are virtualized and accessed as a service, through an API.¹ 

 If it is still not clear try this analogy; for people who have a home, and you if do your own lawn care then you might own the following pieces of equipment; a rake,  shovels,  a hoe, hoses, lawn mower, fertilizer spreader, an edger, leaf blower, seed, fertilizer and other variety of tools. Instead of owning all this equipment and taking up the time to maintain your lawn, you can hire someone to do this and therefore pay a fee per application usage, letting the lawn care company provide all the equipment and materials and work. The benefit to you is no cost for the all the equipment; they come when you want them and you only pay if the service is performed to your satisfaction. You can spend that saved time golfing or just reading a few novels.  Now the equivalent for an IT enterprise is they must have servers, cables, infrastructure, routers, switches, a data center, massive power supplies, and software applications to support the various lines of businesses.  Cloud computing is like the lawn care company; all the hardware (except for some form of a terminal), applications and services are in the internet cloud.

Again, the benefits of cloud computing to the enterprise are: scalable, instant access and cost savings.  A little more about the proposed benefits:  Scalable, in the current environment, as your business grows and more people use your systems you will need to add more servers, more connections to support the additional traffic and more infrastructures. This impacts your costs and eventually a limit to the amount of scaling you can actually achieve.  With cloud computing you not only can scale but you only pay for what you are actually using.

Instant access; again in the current environment, applications might not be available or limited to the number of users it can support or not even exist. Cloud computing you can have access to applications you currently use and even new applications.

Costs; your capital expenditures decrease considerably and you are paying on a usage basis, thus you are maximizing on your returns. For small businesses the barrier to entry is greatly reduced and thus one can compete with larger enterprises, by using the same applications.

Now like anything in life, there are pros and cons.  Cloud computing might not be good for every enterprise. One example is, a small or medium enterprise that has an efficient infrastructure might find that cloud computing could be more expensive than the current mode of operation. Another consideration is your installed quality of communication versus the quality of communication services or service level agreement (SLA) that is provided by the cloud provider. Other issues to consider are what type of security and maintenance are being provided by the “cloud”?

Like I have said many times before, first make sure you have a strategy and see if cloud computing supports the strategy.  Key factors in determining if cloud computing is right for you are:  the need for scalability, access to applications, availability of skilled IT resources, security, service level agreements, economics, reliability, and maintenance.

But at the end of the day the real issue is cost; is your cost to run your IT for today and tomorrow less then the potential cost of using the “cloud”?

Next time we will go into the next level of discussion regarding cloud computing.

RHL 2/9/10

1. www.appistry.com