Moves to the cloud can spark turf wars
The decision to migrate company information-technology functions to the cloud or elsewhere is usually broken down as a set of specific cost-benefit calculations. However complicated the weighing of the startup savings and the longer-term returns involved in outsourcing IT, it at least appears to be a rational process.
But for sure, turf battles and human egos also enter the picture. And they receive the focus in a study by Subrata Chakrabarty of the University of Nebraska and Dwayne Whitten of Texas A&M, recently revised.
For their research they break company executives into two camps: On the one hand are IT executives like the CIO and head of IT; and often opposing them, "business executives" — aka CEOs, CFOs and COOs…