This transformation is happening rapidly. Many IT departments feel that they are struggling to stay relevant when the Lines of Business is going off buying their own cloud solutions, without involving their IT department and eroding the IT budget. However, the IT department still carries the responsibility of making it all work together, the new LoB cloud solutions as well as the existing systems. Integration of these systems is a pre-requisite to a functional IT landscape. There are many new skills that the classic IT department, especially the CIO as leader, will have to develop to facilitate this transformation. The IT services need to become easier to consume. The focus is changing from infrastructure to agility.
I believe that the key for success for the IT organization is to transform into an internal service provider, offering IT services to their business (LoB and the end-users). Simply pushing back against the existing adoption of new cloud solutions are not an option, instead they need to become the cloud broker, the one stop shop for IT services, whether they are on premise or in a public cloud. If IT transforms themselves as IT service providers to the Business (LoB and end-users) offered in a private cloud then they will create real value to the business, win back their relevance and with that also their budget.
It becomes less important where an application is running and more important that the services are delivered quickly, with a high availability and flexibility. So IT needs to focus on increasing automation and providing self-service scenarios. And of course the services provided should be charged in a pay-as-you -use principle. In other words, just like a subscription of a public cloud solution. In such a hybrid environment, the internal IT needs to be in control of the integration between the public cloud solutions and the on premise landscape or private cloud ERP solution and can then provide business value to the whole organization and NOT only to the one LoB.
What must the CIO and the IT team do:
Implement the right technology and tools:
Make operations more efficient by providing IT as a service:
Understand what organizational changes are required
Summary
Ideally, the IT staff will see their company’s cloud adoption as an opportunity instead of a threat. With a well-positioned IT department they will move up the value chain and be the strategic partner that creates value to the business.
Surely, some IT roles will disappear, but new more exciting roles will be created that will allow IT to work with new innovative technologies instead of patching servers or back up hard drives.
If the IT staff is willing to change the way they have worked in the past, work closer with the business and to enable themselves in new technologies and solutions, they will stay relevant even after their company’s cloud transformation.
Resources:
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For more opinions on how Cloud Computing may affect your Industry and/or Line of Business (LoB) - and thus your career, read here:
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