Cloud computing helps business-IT relationship

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Stephen Bell.

Cloud computing might seem on the surface to be a cause of potential discord between the ICT team and the other parts of the business. Business users, knowing they can flexibly and cheaply fire up applications to handle many standard tasks, will seek to do this without involving ICT.

But in practice, say panellists at a cloud session at the NZ Oracle User Group conference last week in Wellington, the effect will be beneficial, giving the ICT department a means of concentrating on the unique aspects of the company’s business – their market differentiators. Changing the relationship between business and ICT as a result of the rise of cloud can be “a massive positive”, says Doug Hughes, vice president responsible for Oracle’s Fusion cloud services in Asia-Pacific…

An ICT department charged with providing computer services to the whole business can become enmeshed in complex “business transformation” projects, where generally they “over-promise and under-deliver”. When the business people get an economical software-as-a-service solution “IT says ‘that doesn’t comply with the strategy we’ve been developing for the past 15 years; you’ve caused big problems.’ The reply is ‘IT: they did it because you’re not delivering.’”…

Read more from the source @ http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/cloud-computing-helps-business-it-relationship