By Elizabeth Kelleher
Use of cloud technologies for IT infrastructure will accelerate rapidly in 2011 as new cloud services are brought to market, according to the latest IDC report ‘Asia Pacific (Excluding Japan) Cloud Services and Technologies 2011 Top 10 Predictions: Dealing with Mainstream Cloud’.
The report said that with the exception of Japan, the Asia Pacific region has emerged from the economic uncertainties of 2009 and 2010 with increased enthusiasm for cloud computing as a way of delivering existing and new business services.
However, IDC said that cloud users are beginning to look beyond the basics of Software-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service to source business services that will enable their organisations to take advantage of recovering markets more quickly.
Tim Dillon, associate vice-president of research at IDC, said that with the emphasis now on business processes, consulting, design and management, technology will become less of a focal point for CIOs.
“The endgame of this trend is an IT framework where business managers can fully manage, procure and consume all the services, processes and systems they require in order to run their business in the best and most agile way possible,” said Dillon. “And in this framework, none of these will be seen as or consumed as ‘IT’ but merely seen as necessary services.”
Dillon said the key responsibilities of the CIO will move beyond validating suppliers in terms of availability, performance and compliance.
“The future role of the CIO will be much more business focused and will become more about managing contracts and relationships. So even for the CIO, technology itself is becoming less and less of a focal point.”
He said that while technology will no longer be the main focus for CIOs, it’s nonetheless at the core of the “transition towards IT being seen as any number of services”.
“All CIOs today should be focusing on how their choice of IT can help the enterprise to get to this point,” said Dillon.
“Any IT deployment, any IT plan and every IT strategy today should be seen in the light of how enterprise IT can be changed from being technology-centric to being business-centric. The CIO should focus on IT that enables this transition towards IT without technology.”
