In Technology Spectator today I have a piece on cloud services and how the promise of high reliability threatens the IT manager and Chief Information Officer.
This shift is the same change that’s affected the IT support industry, as technology becomes more standardised and a commodity the need for specialist support and management becomes unnecessary.
In many respects this is similar to a hundred years ago where most factories had their own power plants providing electricity, steam or bel power to drive the machinery.
As mains power became common and reliable, businesses no longer needed specialist staff to ensure the power flowed.
While much of today’s commentary focuses on the CIO role evolving, it may well be the position is redundant.
Dear Paul,
I often appreciate your interesting views. But this time, again, you may be rather mistaken.
You DO NEED a CIO, more than ever!
Even though, or better, even MORE when you use cloud services.
The need has little to do with the machine park you own, but everything with how your organisation is using ICT . . .
And by the way, today the comparison with electricity is not very appropriate.
But, interesting enough, your comparison hides a prediction for the future: soon organisations will again need a CEgyO, yes for Energy: using energy and producing energy efficiently is becoming a challenge by itself.
And this then hides another prediction: in the future the CIO will be needed, not only to manage the cloud service usage, but also the services provided TO THE CLOUD: this will be the Smart Cloud (comparable to the Smart Grid) . . . .
BR,
Cees Lanting
Sen Mkt Mgr
CSEM (CH).