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Cloud Computing Not Just About IT

service-deliveryThe word ‘cloud’ has been literally hanging over executives’ heads for the past two years — in the form of massive banners hanging from the ceilings of almost every hub airport they travel through. To date, the focus of cloud has been on the delivery of IT-related capabilities from IT-related providers, largely for things that the IT department is responsible for managing.

Cloud computing is expected to grow to 20% or more of the total IT budget by 2013. Gartner research shows that there is already significant non-IT involvement in decision making about cloud services, with finance, marketing, HR and other business units acting as key stakeholders 25 to 30% of the time and actually funding cloud services between 10 and 30% of the time. Although largely a technological development, many of the pertinent questions today about the usefulness of cloud computing as a business platform are non-technical. We believe over time businesses will better understand the principle that cloud computing is a means to deliver IT-enabled capabilities, not just simple IT capabilities.

As this thinking evolves, the focus of cloud computing will shift toward exploiting it as a service delivery mechanism for the provision of non-IT capabilities, such as such as payroll, printing, logistics and e-commerce. In this context, cloud computing enables these services to be delivered from organisations that are not traditionally seen as IT companies, nor have any intention of ever being seen in this way.

By 2015, Gartner predicts that 20% of non-IT sector global 500 companies will be cloud service providers. We are already seeing examples of this emerging.

Large retail, financial service, government and media organisations have begun to recognise that supply chain competencies do not need to be commercialised solely through their stores, either physical or online. As discrete capabilities, they have their own revenue potential. We’ve also seen distribution businesses undertaking the same strategy. This trend is not being wholly enabled, or strictly defined, by cloud computing.

There are several related trends that are actually fuelling the business mandate behind this, such as the accelerated digitisation or ‘hyperdigitisation’ of many industries that are largely information based, such as financial services, education, communications and media, government and industry-specific intermediaries, such as the travel and insurance sectors.

These industries deliver non-physical digital services, increasingly mostly online. Additionally, many businesses have been exploring the move toward process externalisation driven by activities such as open innovation.

The move by non-IT organisations to provide non-IT capabilities via the cloud will mean even more technology decisions will be made outside the IT organisation. Ultimately these services are bound to service-level agreements that will be understood best by the owner of the specific process. Yet, while the barriers that historically prohibit these groups from directly provisioning these services drop, the need to manage data and integration requirements remain.

Far from being a problem, this represents another opportunity for IT departments to redefine their value proposition as service enablers — either through consumption or provision of cloud-based services.

As non-IT players externalise business competencies via the cloud, they will compete directly with IT organisations that have traditionally served in this capacity.

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Telecoms Buyers Dial Up VoIP Services

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Forecasts from the global analyst firm Ovum reveal that OTT VoIP will cost the global telecoms industry $479bn in lost cumulative revenues by 2020, which represents 6.9% of cumulative total voice revenues.

However, new research Future of Voice provides some reassurance to operators that are fearful of the demise of traditional telephony. It suggests that although revenues continue to fall, voice traffic is simply shifting rather than collapsing. Carefully targeted price increases are expected to be commonplace as operators try to maintain their revenues.

Yet, Ovum believes that a focus on creating cloud-oriented telephony apps, and efforts to maintain the relevance of telephone numbers will ensure that operators have a place in the future communications landscape.

“Where operators have seen voice telephony as a service without a future, they have chosen to compete on price in an effort to eke out any remaining revenues from the market,” said Jeremy Green, principal telecoms strategy analyst at Ovum.

“However, taking such a pessimistic view obscures some important commercial realities and opportunities in the voice telephony market.”

Taking these factors into consideration the complete collapse of telephony revenues is not likely, according to Ovum, but the long-term trend is towards a richer and more complex communications environment in which voice serves a different function and telephony plays a smaller role. Ovum’s research shows that users have been heavily influenced by their experiences with OTT players’ services, and now expect traditional operators to provide content, relationships, and history within a service, irrespective of device or access method.

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Cloud Investments Pay Off After Hurricane Sandy

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Many design and construction companies affected by Hurricane Sandy harnessed the powers of technology to serve their clients and remain operational in the aftermath of the storm.

Investments that paid off the best were virtualization tools and cloud-based private networks, say some firms. To communicate, most firms rerouted e-mail, sent out mass e-cards or used social media to alert clients and employees with key updates. Others went to much greater lengths and the difference showed.

For Jason Burns, vice president of technology for construction manager firm Hunter Roberts Construction Group in lower Manhattan, four years of disaster planning—and investing in virtualization technology—paid off after Sandy’s arrival. The storm surge flooded its office building’s sublevels, cutting power and displacing hundreds of employees, who were able to work remotely until they were able to get back into their main office.

But long before flood waters hit the firm’s headquarters at the World Financial Center near the surging Hudson River, Burns and his IT support team already had activated their disaster-recovery (DR) plans. They rolled all of Hunter Roberts’ critical network systems into the firm’s backup system. Barely a day after Sandy hit, the employees were back online, working from virtual offices set up around the New York City metro area.

The estimating division regrouped at a jobsite on Manhattan’s Upper East side; the purchasing group headed for the Upper West Side. Meanwhile, the accounting groups split off to two jobsites: one in Philadelphia, the other in Brooklyn. All the dispersed employees were able to log back into the company’s network as though they were in the office. They had access to key data and applications, including company phone numbers, thanks to virtualized server systems in the firm’s data center.

By using virtualization software by vendors such as VMWare, Burns and his IT team were able to “drop in” networked offices; monitor each site’s power use, security and connectivity from a central location; and distribute the employees’ office numbers to their new locales by using Voice-over-IP.

Asked for the investments that paid off, Burns cites server virtualization, security and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technologies. Another key investment for DR, he adds, is that the firm only buys laptop computers so employees can login from remote locations.

“We were managing this in the trenches, from the president to everyone else in the company,” he says. “A lot of planning paid off.” However, he adds, none of the planning would have paid off fully without the right IT team in place. Many employees had left their laptops at the office the weekend before Sandy hit. Burns and his IT group fetched some 60 laptops from the then-powerless office and went on a distribution mission to get them in the hands of displaced employees. The DR plan, he adds, simply “wouldn’t have happened without the IT team.”

The Network as the Computer

Structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti (TT) lost power for four days starting on Monday night, Oct. 29, at its 225-person, three-floor headquarters in midtown Manhattan. TT’s business-continuity strategy included many of the tools that Hunter Roberts used, including security and IP technologies. The firm’s ace in the hole is its system that backs up all New York City office data in its Chicago office through its wide-area network (WAN).

“There is an image of New York City’s project information on our Chicago server that is read-and-write accessible,” says Steve Ross, TT’s chief information officer.

Employees in any of the firm’s U.S. offices who were working on a New York City-area project were able to access the data from Chicago’s servers. “We back up both ways in Chicago and New York, currently, ” says Ross. Three other, smaller offices back up to the cloud, he adds.

In addition, all the external phone calls coming into TT’s New York City offices were routed to Chicago, Ross says.

Power came back on Nov. 2. On Nov. 3, IT personnel were back in TT’s office to reconfigure the systems so they would be operational on Monday, Nov. 5.

At press time, TT’s New York City phones were still down. However, through VoIP, TT is able to leverage its WAN so that people in all the firm’s offices can port their numbers. Meanwhile, all their clients and business partners have the cell- phone numbers of TT employees. TT sent the numbers out in a mass e-mail on Oct. 31.

Social media did its part to help amplify the power of networking investments. For example, design firms Perkins + Will and FXFOWLE used Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to stay in touch with clients and employees.

Author: Erin Joyce and Nadine M. Post with Laurie Meisel

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Public Sector Behind the Cloud Curve

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Cloud computing has become mainstream in 2012 for providing IT facilities, but the public sector is slower to move into the cloud than private companies.

Cisco commissioned independent research amongst IT decision makers, in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees across a broad range of vertical sectors including government. The results clearly show that cloud has moved from hype to reality, with cloud now seen as a mainstream element of IT strategy.

Cloud computing, which allows oganisations to share resources, software and applications, has the potential to bring radical change to public sector ICT services. Using the cloud reduces costs and risks and brings scalability, and resilience.

The report finds IT decision makers within government are increasingly placing applications and services from across their business into the cloud and planning a 46 per cent increase by 2014. But only 24 per cent of government IT decision makers consider cloud as being critical and underpinning much of the organisations’ activity.This compares with 31 per cent in the private sector.

The message that cloud can deliver significant cost reduction is now resonating with the IT community and cost saving has become a top driver for adopting cloud. In CloudWatch 2011, reducing cost ranked fifth in a list of most important things when considering cloud, but in 2012 it ranks as the number one priority.

Security still remains the number one concern when putting services and applications in the cloud. But that concern is noticeably less pronounced than in last year’s report and the use of public cloud is up 11 per cent, although private cloud still dominates.

Ian Foddering, Chief Technology Officer and Technical Director, Cisco UK and Ireland said: “This new report validates a shift that many of us in the IT industry have been witnessing first hand over the last 6-12 months. Cloud usage has now gone mainstream. After several years of ‘hype’ across the IT industry, it now seems that cloud is maturing and organisations across a broad range of sectors are realising the benefits of moving to a cloud model.”

Cloud computing has become mainstream in 2012 for providing IT facilities, but the public sector is slower to move into the cloud than private companies.

Cisco commissioned independent research amongst IT decision makers,in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees across a broad range of vertical sectors including government. The results clearly show that cloud has moved from hype to reality, with cloud now seen as a mainstream element of IT strategy.

Cloud computing, which allows oganisations to share resources, software and applications, has the potential to bring radical change to public sector ICT services. Using the cloud reduces costs and risks and brings scalability, and resilience.

The report finds IT decision makers within government are increasingly placing applications and services from across their business into the cloud and planning a 46 per cent increase by 2014. But only 24 per cent of government IT decision makers consider cloud as being critical and underpinning much of the organisations’ activity.
This compared with 31 per cent in the private sector.

The message that cloud can deliver significant cost reduction is now resonating with the IT community and cost saving has become a top driver for adopting cloud. In CloudWatch 2011, reducing cost ranked fifth in a list of most important things when considering cloud, but in 2012 it ranks as the number one priority.

Security still remains the number one concern when putting services and applications in the cloud. But that concern is noticeably less pronounced than in last year’s report and the use of public cloud is up 11 per cent, although private cloud still dominates.

Ian Foddering, Chief Technology Officer and Technical Director, Cisco UK and Ireland said: “This new report validates a shift that many of us in the IT industry have been witnessing first hand over the last 6-12 months. Cloud usage has now gone mainstream. After several years of ‘hype’ across the IT industry, it now seems that cloud is maturing and organisations across a broad range of sectors are realising the benefits of moving to a cloud model.”

Cloud computing has become mainstream in 2012 for providing IT facilities, but the public sector is slower to move into the cloud than private companies.

Cisco commissioned independent research amongst IT decision makers,in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees across a broad range of vertical sectors including government. The results clearly show that cloud has moved from hype to reality, with cloud now seen as a mainstream element of IT strategy.

Cloud computing, which allows oganisations to share resources, software and applications, has the potential to bring radical change to public sector ICT services. Using the cloud reduces costs and risks and brings scalability, and resilience.

The report finds IT decision makers within government are increasingly placing applications and services from across their business into the cloud and planning a 46 per cent increase by 2014. But only 24 per cent of government IT decision makers consider cloud as being critical and underpinning much of the organisations’ activity.
This compared with 31 per cent in the private sector.

The message that cloud can deliver significant cost reduction is now resonating with the IT community and cost saving has become a top driver for adopting cloud. In CloudWatch 2011, reducing cost ranked fifth in a list of most important things when considering cloud, but in 2012 it ranks as the number one priority.

Security still remains the number one concern when putting services and applications in the cloud. But that concern is noticeably less pronounced than in last year’s report and the use of public cloud is up 11 per cent, although private cloud still dominates.

Ian Foddering, Chief Technology Officer and Technical Director, Cisco UK and Ireland said: “This new report validates a shift that many of us in the IT industry have been witnessing first hand over the last 6-12 months. Cloud usage has now gone mainstream. After several years of ‘hype’ across the IT industry, it now seems that cloud is maturing and organisations across a broad range of sectors are realising the benefits of moving to a cloud model.”

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Cloud Gives CFOs Chance To Get Involved With IT

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Google research says financial bosses will take more active role in buying IT services

Cloud computing will give chief financial officers (CFOs) the chance to become more influential on the technology side of a business, according to a new study.

According to the research by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Google, half of the senior financial decision makers quizzed believe that as the adoption of cloud computing within enterprise continues to grow, CFOs will become more influential in the purchasing and management of IT services.

The survey also revealed that many CFOs agree with the IT department that cloud computing can have a positive impact on the business.

Two-thirds (66%) of respondents the cloud increases the IT department’s contribution to corporate strategy while 69% believe that cloud computing increases the IT department’s ability to innovate.

Many CFOs are pinning their hopes on cloud computing: a massive 93% said that cloud computing will be important to the success of their company over the next 12 to 18 months, and 94% believe that cloud computing provides their business with quantifiable benefits, such as reduced IT maintenance costs (44%), reduced IT spend (47%) reduced operational costs (47%) and improved process efficiency (34%).

Most business surveyed (68%) said their company has either already implemented cloud services or has plans to.

“To date, enterprise cloud adoption has been largely driven by the IT function. However, today we see ourselves having more discussions with CFOs, COOs and CEOs and it is not hard to see why,” said Thomas Davies, Head of Google Enterprise for the UK and Ireland.

“The benefits of cloud computing go far beyond the obvious cost savings on software and reducing the burden of maintenance. The strategically significant role it can play within an organization in terms of driving innovation and productivity is making it an increasingly attractive option for businesses that want to remain competitive and agile,” he added.

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CIOs Worried By The Cloud

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CIOs are worried: cloud computing is being used as a way for businesses to dodge the IT department and get services delivered more quickly. But as well as giving the CIO sleepless nights, this attempt to side-step the IT department is causing additional cost and complexity along the way.

I recently wrote about how cloud computing deployments are kicking off without the CIO’s knowledge, and only coming to light when sys admins put their expenses through. Inside a large organisation this can mean uncontrolled spending on cloud computing that rapidly reaches tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And according to research by Forrester Consulting, two thirds of CIOs now believe their business sees cloud computing as a way to circumvent IT.

“The simultaneous pull of cost reduction and simplification in one direction and better, cheaper, faster in the other is putting a strain on IT’s ability to meet expectations. CIOs are concerned that cloud provides their business a way around IT, which undermines the strategic partnership they are trying to build with business leaders,” said the report ‘Delivering On High Cloud Expectations’.

According to the report, one in three CIOs strongly agreed with the statement, ‘business executives perceive cloud as a means to be less dependent on IT,’ while only one in five non-CIO respondents felt the same way.

“This contrast indicates CIOs are more concerned than their teams that public cloud challenges, and maybe even undermines, their organisation. We agree with their concern; unbridled public cloud acquisition by shadow IT circumvents carefully planned strategies to reduce complexity, control costs, and provide reliable services.”

The survey also found that ’shadow IT’ acquisition of cloud services is adding to confusion: 48 per cent of firms surveyed officially support deploying mission-critical applications to managed public cloud services, even though these services were being deployed by 80 per cent of organisations. “The 32 per cent difference suggests that many firms circumvent IT to get the services they want, confirming CIO worries.”

Four out of five respondents said setting a cloud strategy is a high priority, but IT organsations are struggling with complexity: four out of ten respondents said they had five or more virtual server pools, and three or more hypervisor technologies, making reducing cost and complexity a priority. The survey, sponsored by BMC Software, polled 327 enterprise infrastructure executives and architects across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Author: Steve Ranger
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Cloud Computing Vital For CIO Career Prospects

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CIOs have tied their future career prospects very much to the mast of cloud computing, with recent research revealing that they believe cloud computing is shifting the focus of their role away from primarily technology onto vital business services, and increasing their chances of promotion to CEO.

In a global survey of 615 CEOs, including Australian CIOs, 57 percent of the Australian respondents said that’s what they believed about the affects of cloud computing on their careers, with 70 percent of the Aussie CIOs feeling “ideally positioned” to move specifically to the CEO role. The research was commissioned by CA and undertaken by reseasrch firm, Vanson Bourne.

CA’s report, however, contrasts the feedback from CIOs about their prospects of moving up to a CEO role, with the “global reality.” CA points out that, in theory, the more strategic focus increases the likelihood of CIOs making the transition to CEO, but in reality globally only four percent of CEOs have risen from the CIO ranks, “illustrating the prevalence of a barrier to career progression.”

According to CA’s managing director at CA Australia & New Zealand, Bill McMurray, the Future Role of the CIO’ report by CA Technologies has uncovered that those CIOs who have adopted cloud computing are “more ambitious than non-cloud adopting CIOs.”

“Demonstrating the extent to which CIOs view their position as a route to more general roles, approximately 93% who have adopted cloud computing, see their position as an opportunity or stepping-stone to other management roles compared to only 30% of non-cloud adopting CIOs of those surveyed, 46% of cloud adopting CIOs versus 13% of non-cloud adopting CIOs saw their current job as a stepping stone specifically to the CEO position. This illustrates the extent to which cloud computing reveals CIO ambition.”

According to McMurray, “there’s no doubt that cloud computing is revolutionising business particularly in these strained economic times,” and he also says it is breeding a “new type of technology leader – one who understands that by using the cloud to innovate, increase speed to market and reduce costs in providing strategic business services, he or she will be in a position to make a significant impact on the business and potentially be positioned to lead it.”

While more than half of the CIOs surveyed said they felt “ideally positioned” to move to the CEO role because cloud computing allows them to spend more time on innovation, business strategy and driving business effectiveness, CA’s McMurray says, however, they face “fierce competition.”

McMurray says the research reveals that 43 percent of CIOs acknowledge that whilst they do have the necessary skills to step up to the CEO role, other job roles have greater experience in using those skills. “How do you marry this ambition with the stark reality today where only ‘4’% of current CEOs has risen from the CIO ranks, 29% have risen from the Chief Financial Officer position and a further 23% were previously Chief Operating Officers?”

McMurray also says that the CIO role today is still viewed as a technical role according to 43 percent of CIOs, and this is the reason why relatively few CIOs have successfully made the transition to the CEO role. McMurray also suggests that a lack of ‘digital literacy’ in the boardroom is compounding this problem with 40 percent of CIOs stating that their board was ’digitally illiterate’ and did not understand the impact of new and emerging technologies. A further 42 percent of CIOs said that the board did not understand the value that IT brings to the business, causing a lack of responsiveness to the market and missed business opportunities.

And, McMurray cites comments by Martin Retschko, national practice director at executive search specialists, Hudson ICT, that the role of the CIO is no longer “purely about technology”, and who further remarked: “In Australia, we are seeing that this position is evolving from the traditionally technical role of a CIO to one that is more strategic and business focused. CIOs that show an understanding of, and commitment to developing the business, are much more likely to evolve beyond their traditional role.”

CA’s McMurray says that the research reveals that ambitious CIO cloud adopters are not complacent either, with 93 percent saying they need new skills to remain effective compared to 63 percent of ‘non-clouders’. Specifically, 48 percent of CIOs, says McMurray, deemed skills in commercial procurement to be vital, while cloud CIOs also prioritised service performance skills and negotiation and sales skills compared to their non-cloud adopting counterparts.

“In many ways, CEOs and CIOs share the same skill-set, particularly in terms of managing budgets, new projects and communicating their plans and strategies with internal and external stakeholders. The role of CIO will continue to extend beyond its technical attributes and we expect to see an increase in the number of CIOs taking on broader, C-Level roles,” Retschko says.

According to the research by CA, perceptions are changing since 54 percent of CIOs report that the C-level management team sees the role of the CIO as becoming increasingly important within the organisation which, according to McMurray, suggests that the boards view of the CIO is already changing.

“This research finds that cloud computing is positively impacting the ambition of today’s CIO and giving rise to a new breed of business savvy technology leaders. To ignore this trend or what these leaders could bring to the leadership of an organisation may well hinder business competitiveness and growth,” McMurray concludes.

Author: Peter Dinham
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Cloud Solves IT Innovation And Maintenance Imbalance

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CIOs will have the opportunity to move away from the traditional scenario of spending 80% of their budget on maintenance and 20% on innovation if they harness cloud computing technologies.

This in turn will raise the expectations put on CIOs from the boardroom, who will expect IT to drive business innovations.

Cloud computing is shaking-up competitive landscapes as companies of all sizes can access the same resources and reach similar markets as a result. But if businesses want to take full advantage of the cloud, CIOs will have to clearly define the opportunities for the wider business and not just the IT department.

The technology environment becomes more scalable and dynamic in the cloud and it is possible through cloud-based resources for IT departments to punch above their weight. Through access to unlimited compute power on a pay-as-you-use basis, companies of any size can have new systems up and running in hours rather than weeks.

Traditionally to create systems, unless IT departments had spare capacity, they would have to get hold of some computing power in the form of servers. This would take some time because they would have to go through the long process of requesting the kit and having it approved and integrated. But through the cloud they have instant access and are charged for what they use.

The benefits to the IT department are easy to quantify in time and money savings but for the business to increase its market reach or develop new routes to market, for example, will require innovation from the CIO.

Dan West, CIO at online clothing retailer Asos, says IT leaders have the opportunity to innovate and test things out without taking huge risks.

“You can deploy a cloud-based development environment in five minutes and if it fails you are not left with resources you don’t need,” he said.

The overheads related to buying, integrating and managing new servers is not required in a cloud environment, says West.

As an online-only retailer Asos is more aware than most about the opportunity to grow business using technology. It is using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to support its growth. For example Asos, has put an application programming interface into Azure to extend its reach through mash-ups.

Rob Fraser, CTO of cloud services at Microsoft and former CIO at RiskMetrics, says cloud requires a business response, and as such cloud strategy needs to belong to the boardroom, and not just be considered something within the technology organisation: “A solely IT-focused approach will deliver internal innovation, but may well miss the bigger external disruptions to which the business must respond.”

Recent research by IDC revealed that 67% of CIOs believe their job is evolving to a “chief innovation officer” and they expect to have more money to spend on innovation. IDC says CIOs expect the innovation budget to grow between 23% and 28% over the next three years.

Cloud computing will be an important part of these innovations, says IDC: “We predict 2012 will be the year that the majority of CIOs start to employ the four pillars (cloud, mobile, social, and big data/analytics) to realise business innovation.

“2012 will be a turning point as the impact of cloud services and the consumerisation of IT reach a critical mass. CIOs have the experience to lead this transformation and they are ready to step up.”

First and foremost there is work to be done by the CIO to understand both the internal-facing and customer-facing clouds.

Fotis Karonis, CIO at mobile network Everything Everywhere, agrees that the cloud strategy should not lie completely on the plate of the CIO.

But he says CIOs will play an important role to take their businesses into the cloud. He says the cloud has two sides to it that might require different approaches and lots of testing.

“The core applications that the business uses cannot always go straight into the cloud. You first have to build an awareness of the cloud,” he said.

Karonis says businesses will begin to do this using private clouds and linking to services in the public cloud. While internal systems can be consolidated in private clouds, businesses can reach more customers through public clouds.

Everything Everywhere, which is the UK joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile, is currently running a project to move 40% of of its internal systems to a private cloud within three years.

Author: Karl Flinders
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Cloud Sprawl

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The cloud computing industry rolls along at a staggering pace. So much so that one of the biggest issues currently affecting adoptees is the speed at which it expands.

It may sound like a badly made ’90s sci-fi flick, but ‘Cloud Sprawl’ is causing many a headache for IT directors across the globe. And while the term may have been first coined over two years ago, it appears it’s only now that we’re coming to understand the kind of issues it presents.

The sprawl is something that occurs as a result of business applications being used by employees of big organisations “in the cloud” and via remote access, without the consent or sign-off by company IT departments.

It may sound innocuous, but imagine the scenario – a global corporation with say, 10,000 connected employees, suddenly finds a sharp rise in unauthorised costs and relays it back to the IT department. The IT department then discovers that hundreds of new applications are being remotely connected to and used by employees without their permission, on a pay-as-you-go basis. It’s easy for the problem to spiral (or rather, sprawl) out of control. It’s the ultimate outsourcing problem.

What does the IT department do? It can’t simply put a lid on the situation. The whole point of that organisation’s connection with cloud-based software-as-a-service is to streamline IT; make it more mobile and easier to upgrade to new services in order to be able to efficiently react to market changes, and new requirements that require new software.

As an example, many businesses in the US are now connected to Salesforce’s AppExchange. Employees can dip in and out of business applications depending on what they need to get certain jobs done. It’s services like this that make the concept of cloud computing so revolutionary, but so challenging at the same time.

Cost isn’t the only issue, either. We were luckily enough to talk about the problem to an IT provider, Avanade, last month through Business Cloud News, and they made it clear how problematic cloud sprawl was becoming:

“The danger in staff accessing and using multiple unmonitored services from the cloud in the workplace is that it can lead to cloud sprawl, which in turn can leave important or confidential company and customer data vulnerable, unsecured – or lost altogether,” said Nick Merriman, the company’s Head of Cloud in the UK.

“Furthermore, cloud sprawl can prevent companies from fully leveraging many of the advantages and cost savings associated with cloud computing. Without careful management and a defined strategy in place, an organisation risks undoing many of the benefits that cloud computing offers.”

IT Directors in the UK are concerned by the spread of cloud services in the UK – 67 per cent of them, according to a recent survey conducted by another computing provider, Opsview. If fact, 54 per cent of those surveyed were unsure of how many cloud-based services their employees were even using – underlining the lack of visibility cloud computing can create.

“Ultimately unless the IT department has visibility into the cloud services being used by employees it is very difficult to keep track of what is being spent at any one time, since users are not going through traditional IT procurement channels,” said the company’s Product Manager, James Peel.

And this is evidently the biggest issue. Cloud computing isn’t a traditional procurement channel, even though many IT organisations say they’ve been doing software-as-a-service for years.

So while security continues to remain the cloud’s top topic for debate in many IT expos and among many column inches, perhaps cloud sprawl deserves more attention. It could be the difference between the cloud proving to be a genuinely cost-effective way for businesses to do IT, and a subscription-based nightmare with blockbuster-flop-sized repercussions.

Author: Chris Ward
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How Cloud Computing Will Change IT

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If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained.

Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue.

I am not competing with the publisher of “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”. The articles here are gathered for the benefit of my clients and prospects who are trying to make a decision about cloud computing in their business. There are no competing ads here.

By asking me to remove “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”, the publisher lessened the opportunity for the author to have his ideas more widely read and the publishing website lost the long term SEO benefit of the link from this page that was here to acknowledge the source of “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”.

I invite you to check out these links to articles with information similar to “How Cloud Computing Will Change IT”