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What The Rise Of Cloud Computing Means For IT Pros

Forbes Technology Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Allan Leinwand

Twenty years ago, enterprise CIOs began using public cloud computing applications to ease the basic IT headache of maintaining and updating all systems and applications. Ever since, industry watchers have been predicting those CIOs would someday move most of their IT resources to the cloud, too. That day has come, and it's creating significant changes to the roles and responsibilities of those CIOs and their IT organizations.

My company recently commissioned a survey of more than 1,800 people evenly split between IT, Line-of-Business and DevOps from enterprises worldwide. As a cloud service provider, our objective was to determine when the pundits’ cloud computing predictions would come true. However, we did not expect to find that the shift had already occurred.

Enterprises Have Already Moved to the Cloud

Most enterprises we surveyed had chosen to host new business applications and services in the cloud. In fact, 52% were cloud-first (i.e., new apps and services were hosted in the cloud as opposed to on infrastructure the enterprise owns and manages). We also saw that this trend was not a temporary spike: This 52% could grow to 77% within two years as more enterprises said they plan to become cloud-first in the future.

Other research reports similar findings. For example, McKinsey’s IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) Cloud and Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure surveys found an overall shift from what it calls “build to consume” IT systems, with off-premise environments expected to see considerable growth.

While our survey focused on the enterprise, the 800 CIOs and IT executives worldwide McKinsey polled represented everything from small- and medium-sized companies to Fortune 100 enterprises. McKinsey found that more large enterprises are expected to move workloads to the cloud at a faster rate than in the past. It also found a similar trend in midsize enterprises, “but to a lesser degree, as they have been ahead in cloud adoption so far, relative to large enterprises.”

Whether your company has already reached the cloud tipping point or is approaching it, this accelerated pace requires IT organizations to evolve into a provider of services and expertise in how to use technology to drive business outcomes. The priority is no longer installing, maintaining and replacing IT systems and applications in the data center, as most of those now reside in the cloud.

The term “cloud computing” is an umbrella that encompasses everything from basic services like file storage, sharing and email to more complex applications like workflow automation. But as I meet with CIOs in companies across industries, I discovered that DevOps is also driving them to be cloud-first.

DevOps Tips The Cloud-Data Center Balance

Our survey results confirmed my suspicions: 76% of respondents credit DevOps (development and operations) instead of IT as being the reason they moved to be cloud-first.

If you’re about to check where DevOps resides on your company’s depth chart, don’t bother. DevOps may not be a department. A majority of respondents (63%) saw DevOps as an operating philosophy with origins in the agile development community.

Put simply, there are a growing number of cloud-based development tools and templates that allow anyone in the business to develop new apps without having to code. Business units don’t need to wait for IT to deliver an app; they just do it themselves. In other words, if someone in the HR department has an idea for an application that can automate the process for requesting vacation days, they can develop that app without IT’s help.

The rise of DevOps means more of the enterprise will be playing in IT’s backyard. IT will see more business app projects come from the bottom up, and will need to help the other parts of the business by providing useful tools and code. Simultaneously, IT still needs to maintain control of their enterprise environments for security and compliance reasons.

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What CIOs Should Look Out For

The IT department now finds itself marginalized not by a new department, but by a philosophy. That raises two red flags.

  1. Nine out of 10 companies that have moved to a cloud-first model said IT lacked the skills to shift to cloud-first.
  1. Eighty-eight percent believe their IT departments could be replaced by the cloud at least some of the time.

I believe the need for a traditional “Keeper of the Data Center” role is diminishing. The cloud-first reality makes it difficult for IT to keep control of the enterprise computing environment. IT must create strategies to achieve security, compliance, performance and reliability despite having less control.

IT should focus on becoming a more strategic business partner that oversees the adoption, roll-out and management of all IT services, whether in the cloud or data center.

A top priority should be developing and applying more agile cloud management policies. Recall McKinsey’s conclusion that more companies are moving from a “build to consume” IT model. While IT is highly experienced in managing traditional data center vendors, they must shift from being a builder of computing infrastructure to a broker of cloud services. This requires IT to now manage consumption-model solutions with varying pricing options, discounts and service-level guarantees.

To further complicate matters, companies will find themselves dealing with more vendors, and those vendors will come and go more quickly. It’s becoming increasingly likely that a contract with one vendor may not be appropriate for another. This will drive service integration and management and vendor management to become more important than ever.

Moving to a cloud-first world means big and permanent changes to how CIOs support their organizations’ needs and objectives. Embrace, don’t fear, the cloud-first model. It presents a tremendous opportunity for IT to become a more strategic partner to the entire enterprise.