CIOs Slow to Embrace Cloud Computing
Posted on May 23, 2009 |
I would have liked to attend the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium on Wednesday. I couldn’t make it to Boston but I followed the conference via blogs and the Twitter stream of CIO reporter Kim Nash. Panelists discussed the evolving role of the CIO in light of cloud computing. Some suggested that the job of CIOs would be radically different when enterprise technology moves to the cloud and that CIOs might even need new titles.
I think these discussions are premature at best. While software as a service and cloud computing are making their way into portions of the enterprise, most CIOs are taking baby steps. It will take years before CIOs at Fortune 500 companies need to worry about new job titles. Surveys show that cloud computing and software as a service aren’t currently high priorities for CIOs.
A 2009 survey on IT spending by Goldman Sachs ranked cloud services #33 on the list of spending priorities among CIOs, with about 50 percent saying that it was a low priority. Software as a service ranked even lower at #36, with more than 60 percent categorizing it as a low priority. Check out the chart here.
Another survey in February by global IT consultancy Avanade said that while 90% of C-level executives know what cloud computing is and what it can do that 61% of companies worldwide are not currently using cloud computing systems. Of those who currently use only internally-owned IT systems, more than 80 percent say they don’t plan on integrating any form of cloud computing in the next 12 months.
Yes, cloud computing will eventually happen but it will be a slow and gradual process. Gartner predicts that it will be 3-5 years before we see mainstream adoption of cloud computing.
If I were a CIO listening to industry pundits muse about what to call my job when my day-to-day tech management skills were no longer needed, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to switch to cloud computing either -- not in this economy.
