FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
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Despite prevalent
economic challenges, the
IDC says that IT spending
by organisations in South
Africa has grown at a
faster rate than GDP
over the past year, with
cloud computing and
services driving a large
part of this. Craig Freer,
Executive Head: Cloud at
Vox, says that companies
are not fully aware of the
challenges faced with
moving to the cloud.
T
o mitigate potential risks, CIOs
need to break their current IT
infrastructure down to a granular
level to gain an understanding of
the business requirements and to look at the
value that IT delivers to the business. They
must obtain a view of what technologies
are in place, including a full view of the IT
ecosystem and all its dependencies.
This information can then be used
to produce a total cost of ownership
comparison to demonstrate the gains that
can be made by making the shift to cloud
computing, as a cloud architecture blueprint
and implementation roadmap that brings
together a public, private and/or hybrid
cloud solution for the business.
Managed services
Although many companies are adopting
a cloud strategy, the majority see this
as a phased approach, not a short-term
goal. This means a continued reliance on
on-site computing as their cloud strategy
evolves. Added to this is the current ICT skills
shortage in South Africa and as a result,
more companies are turning to managed
services as a business model.
This brings us to the essence of cloud, which
is not necessarily the platform but the
managed services and applications that are
enabled and made available to companies
in order to optimise their businesses and the
resources that they have access to.
Businesses need to undergo a fundamental
skills and mindset change and IT
departments under the leadership of the
CIO need to move away from a ´break and
fix´ approach to being more SLA orientated.
Investing in skills that focus less on hardware
and more on software will become a
necessity, or CIOs can consider shifting to
vendors that offer not only a cloud solution,
but also a managed services layer.
CIOs will increasingly need to think about
whether their organisations will own the
skills the organisation requires to operate in
the cloud, or if there is a vendor relationship
management model required. In each
instance, it will require a skills change across
the IT department. The CIO will need to find
a partner that not only understands how
to translate a cloud strategy into business
reality, but also the requirements and skills
for cloud transition.
The reality is that the market is moving to
cloud – with a clear split between private
Understand cloud’s
new essence;
drive the business forward
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