The advent of cloud computing is not a source of disruption to the IT department

Some people say that the cloud computing revolution will lead to the revolution of IT departments, and even the disappearance of the IT department, but this article believes that the enterprise executive dysfunction is causing the IT department to reduce the effectiveness of the cause, rather than cloud computing or the emergence of a self-contained device model (BYOD).

It functions are disappearing or becoming less important or being shifted to non-strategic responsibilities. We have often heard this in the last 10 years. Now, this could really happen. This is not the result of cloud computing or BYOD patterns or other possible factors, but of serious problems for many companies.

CIOs want to lift it up to a new level, a broad, in-depth it collaboration between all the people in the company. This cooperation is impossible unless: (1) The company implements effective measures, (2) The supervisors, managers and the employees who are committed to contributing to this matter (3) The full cooperation of all employees who do not consider any political consequences, with sufficient trust among themselves.

Extensive and in-depth it cooperation is the prerequisite for the realization of the company's health

Is IT department function reduced? Borrowing the recent comments from senior IT staff Larry Tieman, the trend of cloud-based infrastructure and SaaS (software as a service) and the vaunted financial advantages have made business executives wonder why they need a CIO.

Larry Tieman is right, and bosses do have questions about that. But when the boss raises this question to the CIO, too many CIOs don't have a clear, convincing answer. This is a glorious thing for CIOs, and it's not a very difficult question to answer.

In a healthy company cloud does not reduce the value of IT department

The discussion of cloud computing and how it has made it disappear is a lot of talk of http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13695.html ">it infrastructure economy." The truth is that IT infrastructure is not as important as it is supposed to be. If all of your IT infrastructure is moved to a cloud-based IaaS or PAAs environment, it's strategic significance will be about zero, or 2% up and down in the business world.

In order to understand why healthy companies are unlikely to reduce or dissolve the strategic role of IT departments, first look at the vital services that the IT department provides to the entire company-some of which are already so prevalent that most companies take it for granted.

So what is it that is important for the IT department to do?

The strategic value of the IT department lies in the application and information base it manages, not the things it runs and stores on its platform. If the advent of cloud computing collapses the IT department, SaaS services will take over from what traditional it does.

For example, a sales executive can bypass it, contact Salesforce directly, and use its CRM system. After that, other department heads will follow the example of sales executives, followed by similar measures.

If companies want to go back to the 1970s, CIOs can and should explain that the situation is good for now. But if the company values consolidation – a task that only it can accomplish, because only it is in the position to do it-then a business-oriented SaaS deployment would be a completely wrong direction.

Island problem: Symptom of unhealthy enterprise

Unhealthy companies don't care about consolidation because no one is asking questions and making decisions about the systems being used.

What this means: Sales executives don't care if the system is salesforce. Also, if an order report is generated in Salesforce, the other department has to have a key update to view it, and the sales department doesn't care because it's not a sales department issue.

Other executives care because their employees have to do a lot of key updates, but they don't have the power to touch Salesforce's deployment and make it work for themselves.

Integration into the SaaS domain is not a technical issue, but an organizational structure of the enterprise. In these pathological organizations, privileged departments are concerned only with their own departments and not with other departments. This is the symptom of an unhealthy company-dysfunctional.

The future of unhealthy companies

One possibility: Such companies will one day wake up and insist that the mess should be tackled by the IT department that has been downgraded. Since the departments never spoke, there was no communication, so the work was as difficult as assembling a car from parts produced in different places. And it may be blamed for the fact that it is doing its duty and will eventually be seen as a big mistake.

These are the performance of unhealthy companies, the other symptom of unhealthy companies is that when there is a problem, it is imperative to find out who is the fault, rather than solve the actual problem

The above discussion concludes that the success of cloud computing depends on the health of the enterprise's executive work.

Original Author: Bob Lewis Source: InfoWorld

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)