CIOs are changing roles. From IT managers, they are becoming innovation managers. While carrying out their "traditional" missions, they must also improve the user experience and leverage new technological solutions to boost business performance. The Cloud makes it possible to meet these challenges.
CIOs are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, they must reinforce the stability of their organization in order to preserve its assets and know-how. But they must also integrate new tools and practices to enable the company to be more agile and thus more efficient than its traditional competitors or even start-ups!
Not all IT managers are ready for this balancing act. Some are unprepared, but understand what's at stake. Others take a step backwards, urged on by the business and their management. And there are those who are burying their heads in the sand, thinking that once the buzz has died down, everything will go back to the way it was before.
This will not be the case. We have to move with the times and recognize that companies are entering a new stage in their evolution, that of their digital transformation.
Technology strategy
For CIOs, this means a major change in the way they work. They need to move away from their traditional framework of private infrastructure and legacy applications.
For decades, their objective was "everything must work". They supervised functional IT tasks: IS maintenance, technical support, negotiation with suppliers... Hence very long cycles! But with increasing competition and the integration of digital technologies, this objective is no longer appropriate. IT-dependent businesses have become very demanding in terms of service quality and availability.
Their goal is now: "everything must work... faster and better!" CIOs have to develop the technological strategy to meet these new needs for innovation. Hence the ever-shorter cycles!
Even if it can't be considered a perfect solution in every respect, the Cloud offers a number of advantages that merit careful, unhurried consideration.
The field of action for CIOs is becoming both richer and trickier to master, as they have to deal with private and public clouds, and even hybrid clouds, as well as traditional and cloud-native applications.
For every challenge, the Cloud can provide a solution:
Regular dialogue with the professions
Many businesses criticize CIOs for focusing on traditional issues, when they should be concentrating on "fast" and "simple" projects. With one overriding objective: to improve the user experience.
Silos break down! In particular, the IT department must work hand in hand with the HR department. It helps them choose external service providers and technical solutions such as SaaS.
Integrating innovative solutions
Without new features, there's no salvation. A significant proportion of the IT budget must be devoted to technologies as part of the digital transformation.
The Cloud enables you to take advantage of services and infrastructures tailored to your needs and capabilities. The IT Department's objective is twofold. Firstly, to take advantage of innovations to stay ahead of competitors and more agile start-ups. Secondly, to avoid being bypassed by business users, who do not hesitate to subscribe to online tools themselves(the shadow IT phenomenon) or to use their own resources (BYOD). According to PwC, 61% of a company's IT expenditure is no longer part of the IT budget!
Cycle reduction
The IT department needs to get out of its ivory tower, where it oversees operational issues. It needs to spend more time with the business to understand their issues and find appropriate solutions. But this objective takes time, and traditional tasks are time-consuming.
The Cloud facilitates the industrialization of processes by automating (through the construction of predefined blocks) recurring tasks.
This DevOps-inspired method makes it possible to manage infrastructure (using scripts) like software. This frees up time, as these obligations have little added value, while limiting errors and ensuring precise traceability of operations.
Data processing
It's obvious today: information is the fuel of every business. Cloud and big data solutions are the key to making the most of it. From now on, the IT department must manage data as a corporate asset, choosing the suppliers offering the best options.
Supporting the balancing act
Thanks to the Cloud, CIOs can move from the role of order taker and implementer to that of business strategist and facilitator.
But the multiplication of offerings sometimes forces IT Departments to integrate different application and technology bricks. Migration to the Cloud is also increasingly envisaged. As a result, information system architecture can become more complex.
It requires new skills that not all IT managers in SMEs have. In this case, it is essential to call on specialized service providers to support them throughout the process.
Finding the right partner is vital for CIOs. You can't improvise a balancing act. Being supported prevents you from falling off the wagon!
