In the world of hybrid cloud, CIOs have to position IT as the enabler of business growth. Providing the right kind of framework to enable applications and information to flow seamlessly across a heterogeneous environment will be critical.
Business is adopting cloud with gusto for many reasons, not the least of which are scalability, agility and cost-effectiveness. However, as the technology and, more importantly, the way it is used matures, it’s clear that hybrid and multi-cloud approaches are emerging as the real game-changer. Seventy-four percent of enterprises globally describe their strategy as hybrid/multi-cloud today, while 62% of public cloud adopters are using more than two unique cloud environments or platforms, according to Forrester Research.
Growing reliance on the hybrid cloud raises new challenges and opportunities for CIOs, says Jonathan Kropf, CEO, Velocity Technology Group. He argues that the emergence of a fully mature cloud environment means that the days of the traditional, fully on-premise IT estate are well and truly numbered. “The battle is to define what the new corporate IT environment will look like,” he says. “CIOs have an historic opportunity to ensure that IT establishes itself convincingly as the enabler of the new era of digital business.”
One of the key issues is “shadow IT”, which occurs when business units simply adopt cloud services on their own. It creates a disjointed IT environment, one that fails to deliver maximum benefit to the company.
It’s all about the Power of One
“The core principle of the hybrid cloud is that all the IT services and capabilities within the company form an integrated whole. What you often have now is, say, a sales cloud application running independently in the sales department, and perhaps a CRM one running independently in marketing,” he notes. “Each of them is generating masses of information that could be used by other applications across the company. Getting these applications (and as a consequence business units) to interact is where the real power of the hybrid cloud lies.”
To achieve true hybrid cloud, CIOs have to position IT as the ally of the business, the enabler, rather than the blocker. This will mean not only helping business units access what they need but also demonstrating how much extra value could be added by bringing information from the rest of the company to bear.
Getting this right will require the culture of the company—as well as the IT department—to change. Like all culture change, it will depend on the degree of support from senior figures in the company and the department. It will also obviously be important that the CIO build relationships with C-suite colleagues, and have a seat on the exco at least.
If IT is simply seen as a cost centre, the change will never happen, Kropf observes.
“Data, and thus information, is everywhere now—the trick is to make it a common resource that everyone can use,” he says. “None of this will be possible if the basic framework is not in place—the architecture of the hybrid cloud can be very complex, with applications and information having to flow seamlessly across multiple environments, from an on-premise data centre into multiple cloud providers, public and private. If you don’t get the fundamentals right you won’t get the true integrated hybrid cloud, you’ll just have a number of standalone services, some of which happen to be in the cloud while others are on site.”