Here are my notes from session of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium session: CIO Keynote Panel - The Evolving CIO Role in Cloud and Mobile Computing Environment. Participants included: Moderator: David Kingston, Managing Director, Corporate Executive Board, panel: Anthony D. Christie, CIO & CTO, Global Crossing, Mark Egan, CIO, VMware, Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO & COO, Global Centers of Excellence, EMC Corporation, and Tasos Tsolakis, EVP & CIO, Iron Mountain. These notes are made real time so please excuse and typos.
David started talking about the “yes but” concerns as they look at what is happening in the cloud and mobility. He wants to focus on the challenges and go beyond the technical ones. He sees the management challenges as the most difficult ones to overcome. He asked each panel member to talk about an exciting thing they are doing. Anthony provide a story about how they “drink their own champagne.” They have 60% of their apps in their private cloud and 90% of new work goes there. They put audio conferencing in the cloud and the user experience improved. They saved 25% during the first 6 months. It has also become a platform for other IT services for hosted communication.
Mark said his firm is about speed and agility and that has been their experience with the cloud. Sanjay wanted to know if their internal users would come back to the cloud if they have a choice and this has been their experience. Tasos said they use the cloud for themselves and customers.
Sanjay said that private cloud starts with efficiency of implementation that leads to efficiency in operation. Anthony said that you need to start with the business problem before efficiency. David said that in one situation hardware efficiency was the focus but agility was the outcome. He wondered if agility is more the driver now. Mark said that you need to take a layered approach: governance, cost, agility.
David asked about whether to start with private or public cloud. Tasos said it depends. In some cases the public cloud can be less expensive and meet the needs. Anthony agrees it is not either but both: public and private. Standards will play an important role.
David asked about the human factor. What behavior changes need to occur? Mark said that we have a much smarter business audience and IT no longer has a monopoly over approaches. Sanjay said we have done optimization and now it is how the business will use what we built. We need to transform to usage and not just projects. Tasos said that IT has to be more proactive and challenge the business. IT needs to get out from the back of the bus. It needs to lead change.
David asked about the legacy migration challenge. Anthony said that it is situation specific. Migration should be delayed when necessary. Tasos said it does not pay off to migrate legacy apps. However, you want to put those apps in the background. David asked how important are self-service aspects of the cloud. Sanjay wants to step away from provisioning. Anthony talked about making apps easy to consume.
David asked about where they are placing innovation bets: individual or enterprise? Tasos said it is both, individual and organizational efficiency. David mentioned that innovation in new uses of tools cuts across generations and is not limited to the younger workers. I agree and am tired of the talk about generation differences when it assumes that only young people understand new technology. Mark stressed providing device independent apps and allow for the user to select their devices. They also need to have the ease of use found on the consumer Web. Anthony said they are actively looking to have more functional analysts who understand the business and not simply have data managers.
David asked about the future of IT and what new skills are enabled by the cloud. Sanjay said this is great opportunity for IT. For years there were well defined IT tracks. Now things are more open and are breaking down IT silos. There is more need for business skills in IT. Tasos agrees and the line between IT and Business is crossing over. David said that many IT roles within the enterprise will not require technical skills, especially unique ones. IT will not be the guild that holds the keys to apps. Much more business knowledge will be needed to apply the apps properly. Mark said that we need to be change agents and have consultative business skills. He is looking for people with these skills.
Tasos said the complexity will be worse before it gets simpler as there will be coexistence with the old ways. David asked how we build those skills. Sanjay said you need to find the people who want to do more. Then give them some space to make mistakes. Anthony it is equally hard to bring someone outside the organization and teach them the enterprise and to expand the skills of someone already inside the organization. If you need to go outside use cross-functional teams for interviews. Also, he likes the idea expressed earlier of doing the interview before you read the resume so you form an independent impression.
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