Discussion on:

The new IT Department: Staying relevant in a changing environment

Have you embraced the changes cloud computing and virtualization present or are you resisting? Do you think that is the best long-term strategy?

Ask the business we are a department of....
They dictate long term strategy, sometimes it can get up to whole month in advance you know..

It is not the IT Dept but the business which needs to identify and recognize the fact that IT is no longer merely a 'Cost-centre', as it is often considered, but can be a crucial business enabler. In my experience in the corporate sector for almost two decades, I have seen IT Depts (actually metamorphose from the traditional 'EDP Dept' to a more appropriate 'IT Dept') transform themselves into change managers and business enablers by function. However, it is amazing still how many large corporates still treat their IT Depts as a 'cost-centre' denying them their fair share as internal business partners in these highly tech-driven business environment. Many corporates still stuck in stone age organizational structures have their IT Heads report to the CFO (Finance Head) rather than the CEO. Unless IT is considered as a distinct function capable of contributing to and enhancing operational efficiency and innovation for greater business impact, corporates will continue to waste their important IT resources, and perhaps lose their brightest minds to competitors or others who value their true worth.

Well said! It does infact produce income, but it does this with internal clients which is not the same as the internal clients generating icome with external clients.

The only way for corporate to see this is by asking them to operate without IT. Then and only then will they see just how much IT contributes to the bottom line.

How sad is it that this is true.

Very well said! I get so tired of being told IT has to make the case when it's the business that needs to change their perception of IT. IT has done a great job of transforming in the last few years and business needs to recognize that fact.

As can be expected from a CEO pushing his view of the world, Mr. Politis' guest contribution paints a blue-sky vision of the future in which his "cloud" plays a prominent role. With sweeping generalizations like "New generations of employees are already equipped with the basic knowledge and skills that were provided by IT a decade ago." and "Now that your organization has migrated to the cloud and youve successfully integrated the different aspects of your IT infrastructure, ...", the arrogance (or perhaps ignorance) of the writer with respect to the reality of today's mid and large size corporate IT organizations is readily apparent. The phrase "head in the clouds" comes to mind.

I find the tech writer is now a salesman pushing the next money maker for their bosses boss. Cloud has good points but is not for everyone and for small to medium IT shops it is not always a given to be more cost effective or better for the business. But shame on you if you do not agree. An IT deparment that is creative and willing to put some effort into building a solid long term business driven strategy so most decisions move towards that target are more effecive in building business opportunities. After all, making money is most businesses primary goal.

from Tech Republic disguised as information. This "guest contributor" is a salesman with an agenda. I won't bother reading this piece.

Personally, I'm getting tired of Tech Republic informercials. I used to find real information here, but those pieces have been replaced by crap like this article and countless company sponsored "white papers" that have little value. Keep it up Tech Republic - I'm on the verge of unsubscribing. Your emails are starting to look a lot like SPAM!

Business needs should drive technology strategy, not the other way around. How many of us have been approached by a senior executive who has just read a piece like this, asking when we are going to adopt this (xyz) technology, with no idea of what it actually is or does.

Cloud Computing -- keep it! Cloud computing requires a great deal of support. End Users and non-technical by in to the marketing hype and are sorely disappointed when applications in the cloud are not as seamless as purported originally. In fact, they are not seamless at all.

Please show us the numbers to how the cloud makes sense? For specialized applications maybe but outsourcing to the cloud is almost never the right thing to do. Corporate it needs do not the cloud does not scale well. For instance, dropbox would cost 12k per year. For a 12k investment, I can have my own SAN and save those otherwise residual expenses.

Another example is cloud emaill. For the same price, I can have in house exchange, a san and vmware environment with cloud backup.

Cloud computing is here and a Corporate storm of support for it is coming ... adapt!.
Until C3P0 is handling the support their is an opportunity for all techs to use their initiative\creativity to bring forth ideas within their realm to be a leader for the changes.
The Cloud concept will continually evolve ... the sky above is the same Clouds come and go what one does is 'adapt'

On one edge, the cloud a.k.a. managed services, can take away all of those hardware and enterprise software maintenance headaches and when something goes wrong it'll be handled by your dedicated service provider. Service providers though have to be solvent of course, and in some cases you'll find out really quick that you may not be their high priority client as you may think you should, but the bigger of the managed service provider's clients may take precedence over your company - and they'll get to your issue, when they get to it. Not good for your company's bottom line as it looses thousands of dollars a minute while critical managed services are inaccessible and there is nothing the in-house IT folk can do about it. Need we say anything about jobs being eliminated to save on payroll?

Pure self centred propoganda.

Why do all these evangelists cry that we must move to the cloud?
Easy - because THEY control it and they make money off it.

Sure they can offer cheaper services based on sheer numbers and the cost advantages. However, the instant a client has issues with being unable to work they point at the ISPs and say it is their fault so we are not liable for losses involved.
Me, I prefer to have my clients data onsite - where they can use it without worrying about shonky internet access. For a large client that can afford dedicated data lines (fibre preferably) it is something I would entertain - but it would be on servers controlled by someone I knew and trusted.

Cloud computing actually saving money is arguable at best. Microsoft Office would not move to a subscription service if it not did earn more in the long run.

Cloud solutions do not seamlessly integrate with existing environments and for the products that do, they increase complexity.

Hosted Exchange is not only expensive, you get a crap interface and limited features.

Sorry, but for many large organizations and for many who has several specialized computing needs, a cloud service will not have any ROI, or be impracticable to use.
There are many applications that tend to be heavy in bandwidth, the cost of supplying that bandwidth to a could based service may not be practice. There are also several security concerns, especially in the financial sector, where PCI, SOX, SAS70, etc requires diligent controls and mitigation's, and hosting to a cloud service will not defer those in any way from the responsibility of the data owner. there is a whole lot of IT that will never, or anytime soon, migrate to a cloud. A lot of manufacturing being automated, controlled via technology requires a lot of local computing, database, storage that does not lend itself to the cloud. Even larger enterprises would be reluctant to have any significant response issues when 1000,s of employees try to open large spreadsheets over a cloud based app (my company tested several and just did not come close to the the performance of local applications).
For many smaller companies that the amount of IT does not warrant a full staff/systems may benefit more so on cloud based services, companies that only have limited back office applications and/or can host their e-commerce outside of their current infrastructure.
Cloud services is nothing new, once was called application hosting/provider services, someone looked at a network diagram and the Internet was the cloud, so became a buzzword for anything on the Internet.
Yes some things can go to a cloud based service, but not everything.