How Cloud Computing Can Be a Change Agent in Your Enterprise – CIO

Part of the CIOs job is to keep the lights on, but increasingly business colleagues are turning to the CIO to lead digital transformations, win customers, and drive revenue. Its a tall order.

sponsored

Are you an enabler or a digital leader? Do you view the CIOs role as that of a change agent or more like an IT triage surgeon?

Many CIOs are conflicted by the need to maximize the value of existing infrastructure while laying the path for digital transformation. Some CIOs may think that the key to effective digital leadership lies in simply clearing the way for business units to quickly innovate by freely consuming cloud services. Grasping a leadership role may be a better option.

Gartner says that 29% of IT spend comes from business units, and that rate is going to increase. This business-driven IT was often a means of getting around traditional slow-paced IT processes, Gartner states. However, in todays world, it is more often designed to provide technically savvy business people a means of implementing new ideas quickly, while adapting to, or entering, new markets as effortlessly as possible.

But simply stepping out of the way of business units is not likely to meet the needs of the boss. According to Gartners 2017 survey of CEOs, 47% say they are being challenged by boards of directors to make progress in digital business.

CIOs should help CEOs set the success criteria for digital business," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow. It starts by remembering that you cannot scale what you do not quantify, and you cannot quantify what you do not define. You should also ask yourself: What is digital for us? What kind of growth do we seek? What's the No. 1 metric and which KPIs must change?

While many CIOs strive to shape digital success within their organizations, they struggle with perceptions that theyre solely transactional IT actors. One of the most accelerated paths to digital transformation in recent years is a cloud-based infrastructure, which is helping drive the adoption of mobile technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) across enterprises and organizations large and small.

To be seen as change agents, CIOs need to play a central role in developing a cloud strategy that enables business units efforts to more effectively consume cloud services. This ensures that lines of business can be more agile and support their specific computing needs, while the overall cloud computing services help achieve corporate objectives for:

A company with 10 different business units doesnt need 10 lines of business leaders haphazardly going off in various directions. Instead, it needs a clear overall technology strategy and vision driven by the CIO that individual leaders can buy into and adopt.

The reality is that most organizations will be using hybrid IT environments for years to come. Its the CIOs role to set overall guidelines on how to balance traditional infrastructure with new capabilities in the cloud, based on the desired outcomes the CEO wants to achieve. Thats the difference between an enabler and a leader.

Sponsored Links

See the original post here:

How Cloud Computing Can Be a Change Agent in Your Enterprise - CIO