CIOs’ Challenges in Transitioning to the Cloud

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Sadagopan Singam.

Cloud computing has cast a shadow over the IT landscape in the past several years, sparking as much confusion as genuine interest. But despite the buzzword du jour feel of the topic, most people now agree that cloud computing is more than just a new IT delivery model and instead represents a sweeping transformation of IT. For CIOs, it can be a significant career enhancer, enabling them to drastically decrease costs and improve IT services for their organizations.

With more and more enterprises planning to transition IT to the cloud, there’s a daunting task facing every CIO who must decide what, when and how to invest in cloud infrastructures and how to leverage opportunities created by transforming their processes and the associated systems. The key challenges include appropriate opportunity selection, choosing the right cloud solution framework, ROI/benefit assessment, resource management and change management…

It remains to be seen just how these challenges interplay and how effectively management disciplines are addressed during the cloud transition. Different organizations have taken varied approaches while adopting cloud for storage, new applications, niche solutions and transformation. Some have undertaken this initiative for more strategic reasons. As a result, the cloud transition has affected areas such as IT governance, organizational structures and asset management across the organization.

Present-day cloud solutions have matured from point solutions into more broad-based offerings, thereby becoming an important part of the business portfolio. The transformative nature of cloud computing makes it possible to span across multiple geographies, processes and emerging areas like enterprise mobility. In order to reap the benefits from cloud computing, factors such as geo landscapes, existing processes and solution roadmaps need to be fully appreciated and mapped to an organization’s vision for growth. With cloud computing, one size doesn’t fit all, and one solution certainly doesn’t fit all either. To that end, companies will have to leverage broader portfolio and solution capabilities specifically aligned to cloud delivery where appropriate. It’s in the combination of various technologies, coupled with delivery vehicles, that a solution is built.