Page 7 - EngineerIT September 2021

ICT – DIGITAL INNOVATION

role of the CIO in the organisation, with his/her in-depth knowledge of technology and
ability to translate the need for certain technology into a business case. CIOs need to
convey this understanding to the CEO in order for the business to run optimally and at the
edge of innovation.
There is no doubt that CFOs are under increasing pressure to be aware of technology
in their financial planning and modelling. Vendors have the opportunity to engage with
and partner with CFOs to enable them to better understand where their OPEX and
CAPEX modelling can be shifted and altered. A multi-cloud strategy can still deliver on
the effectiveness and benefits of innovation, while bringing cost savings when done
appropriately and effectively.

IT departments are no longer seen as a cost centre but more as a business differentiator
with three aspects:

Aspect 1: Sustainable and profitable growth
Greg McDonald This is where IT funding can be looked at from an outside-in approach. It is no longer
about savings but rather about return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership
(TCO). This encompasses how IT can enable customers to consume on a business to
slick, experience-driven applications. customer (B2C) or a business to business (B2B) level.
This will result in more applications and
solutions being deployed in the next five Aspect 2: Internal efficiencies
years than in the previous 40 years. What is fascinating here is the reduction in cost from self-service and charge-back,
Traditionally, a public cloud model allowing organisations to see IT differently.
has brought three issues to the fore:
cost, compliance and analytics. A Aspect 3: Attract and retain the “right” people
public cloud model can become costly, How do you attract and retain talent, access people, enable people, and make sure that
and in addition, compliance across people can be productive?
public clouds becomes very difficult, Multi-cloud is a delivery platform offering an opportunity to deliver apps into people’s
and handling different security policies hands anywhere, on any device, at any time. It is about enabling people to do their job in
between hundreds of accounts can the most effective and productive way possible. The business landscape has changed and
result in complexity. Analytics can be will continue on this accelerated change trajectory. In response, business goals, objectives,
viewed from several different angles operations and finance must change too and all of this must be underpinned by technology
including cost, risk and operational as the enabler. Organisations can increase their agility by using multi-cloud, and by having
inefficiencies, with all three needing apps, services and tools available on demand.
to be considered individually and from Creating new value is very much about how organisations can build modern apps
different angles. The conclusion is that faster and quicker. This phenomenon could be described as a cloud evolution, where
the public cloud model proved to be organisations let developers have infinite compute power for a limited amount of time in
complex and few organisations have order to get the apps into the right hands of the right people, test them, structure them and
expressed readiness to adopt purely do that without any exorbitant cost impact because the organisation already has a multi-
this route. cloud strategy.
Modern applications are now On top of that, we know that the cloud challenges for the CFO are different. CFOs
demanding flexibility. Vendors such must consider how to maintain costs and are now investing in cost control to build a cloud
as Dell Technologies need to gain an strategy that drives innovation.
understanding from customers on where
modern applications are putting pressure The fact of the matter remains that technology and technological innovation are key
on both their infrastructure and the price to organisational survival. Technology should be seen as an investment to enable
of investment. Finance departments need organisations to succeed, remain nimble and even become industry disruptors. CFOs
to ensure that budgets match the need and CIOs have never had to work more closely together to align organisational goals and
for the right innovation at the right time, objectives and to implement the technology required to facilitate and enable this. CIOs
across private clouds, public clouds and should be positioning themselves as key business advisors to the C-suite and be able to
compute edge locations. justify and demonstrate the value that technology and a multi-cloud environment can bring,
This highlights the importance of the when used optimally and combined strategically with AI / ML, and EDGE / IoT. n

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