Managing the cloud

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How can CIOs ensure the cloud gives them an advantage rather than puts them at a disadvantage?

The cloud doesn't have to be a hindrance to effective resource management.

When I suggested the potential for constraining resources to another IT leader, he raised the spectre of shadow IT. Encouraging efficiency through constraint is all well and good in a small IT team. But it's much tougher in a decentralised business, where increasing numbers of workers are going out and buying their own IT resources on-demand, with or without the say-so of the CIO.

Cloud, in conclusion, has to be a team game. No one wants to restrict the ability of individuals to use the cloud to help find innovative solutions to intractable challenges. But while individual workers around the organisation will understand the issue that needs to be solved, the IT team has years of experience of understanding how scalable technology can be applied to business processes.

The cloud doesn't have to be a hindrance to effective resource management. But someone in the organisation needs to govern how the business can generate economies of scale from on-demand IT. And the person best placed to take a view across the entire organisation is still the CIO.

Mark Samuels is editor at CIO Connect.

Mark Samuels
Mark Samuels
Freelance journalist

Mark Samuels is a freelance writer specializing in business and technology. For the past two decades, he has produced extensive work on subjects such as the adoption of technology by C-suite executives.

At ITPro, Mark has provided long-form content on C-suite strategy, particularly relating to chief information officers (CIOs), as well as digital transformation case studies, and explainers on cloud computing architecture.

Mark has written for publications including Computing, The Guardian, ZDNet, TechRepublic, Times Higher Education, and CIONET. 

Before his career in journalism, Mark achieved a BA in geography and MSc in World Space Economy at the University of Birmingham, as well as a PhD in economic geography at the University of Sheffield.