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The rapid adoption of digital business transformation processes and the ongoing deployment of open hybrid cloud platforms are enabling the achievement of software development bold goals. But when management consultants and industry analysts talk about how IT innovation is changing many organisations, government leadership of this key trend typically isn’t top of mind.

That said, a new market study by MeriTalk reveals that approximately two-thirds of American federal government IT leaders say DevOps adoption will help agencies shift into the cloud computing fast lane.

Agile methodologies, continuous integration and continuous delivery are improving IT collaboration and migration speed. But according to the findings, help is required – with 66% of leaders saying that their agency needs to move IT services to the cloud faster to meet their mission and constituent needs.

DevOps is a software development and IT management method that brings software engineering, quality assurance, and IT operations together as an integrated team to collaboratively manage the full application lifecycle. The MeriTalk study examined the cultural and structural barriers to cloud adoption, and potential positive impact from DevOps practices within a government environment.

«We’ve heard a lot about cloud barriers, and we’ve all seen the lackluster GAO cloud spending data,» said Steve O’Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk. «This study highlights a viable path forward. DevOps can help agencies change lanes and shift from inefficient silos to a dynamic, collaborative environment. It’s about people and how they work together, as well as the technology they use.”

Perceived benefits of DevOps methodologies

There’s real upside potential for DevOps adoption in government — 57 percent of survey respondents believe DevOps can help agencies succeed in the cloud. Sixty-three percent say DevOps will speed software application delivery and migration.

Furthermore, 68% see DevOps as a viable path to improve collaboration between IT development, security, and operations teams. Federal IT leaders also anticipate faster application testing (62 percent) with a proven DevOps approach.

The online survey of over 150 U.S. Federal IT managers also found that they believe increasing their cloud adoption pace will boost innovation (70 percent) – refresh existing applications and deploy new ones faster (69 percent); and provide more available, reliable, and secure operations (62 percent).

Barriers to cloud computing service deployment

While security and budget concerns remain top of mind within the leadership of government agencies, organization structure and cultural issues continue to slow the progress toward cloud computing service adoption.

Forty-two percent of IT leaders cite infrastructure complexity as a top challenge to adopting cloud, followed by fear of change (40 percent), inflexible practices (40 percent), and lack of a clear strategy (35 percent).

Some agencies are gaining momentum, but many are experiencing difficulties with the practical execution – since the introduction of cloud, just 44 percent of U.S. Federal agencies have made the required process or policy changes, 30 percent cultural changes, and 28 percent organisational changes.

Moreover, the study uncovered that these same Federal agencies aren’t properly equipped – only 12 percent believe that their IT department has all of the tools they need to transition to the cloud.

Four out of five IT managers (78 percent) believe their IT department needs to improve collaboration to enable a more streamlined move to the cloud. But, only 10 percent of Federal IT managers said that their software developers and administrators are highly collaborative.

Outlook for meaningful and substantive progress

Among the IT managers that understand DevOps benefits, just five percent say their agency has fully deployed a DevOps model. However, 60 percent do see DevOps in their future. Thirty-two percent of government IT managers that are already familiar with DevOps had also adopted the model or planned to do so within the next twelve months.

So, what are the perceived next steps? In order to successfully implement a DevOps model, government IT managers say agencies should train their current personnel (55 percent); establish a new vision for the future (41 percent); and create an incentive for a much-needed change in organisation culture (40 percent).

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Digital Business Transformation projects gained momentum in 2014, as more companies moved their legacy IT workloads to cloud computing platforms and launched a variety of new cloud-native applications. This pervasive trend will continue and accelerate for the duration of 2015.

Total cloud IT infrastructure investment (server, disk storage, and ethernet switch) is forecast to grow by 21 percent year-over-year to reach $32 billion in 2015 — accounting for about 33 percent of all IT infrastructure spending this year, which will be up from about 28 percent in 2014.

Private cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow by 16 percent year-over-year to $12 billion, while public cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow by 25 percent in 2015 to $21 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

For the full year 2014, cloud IT infrastructure spending totaled $26.4 billion, up 18.7 percent year over year from $22.3 billion — private cloud spending was just under $10.0 billion, up 20.7 percent year-over-year, while public cloud spending was $16.5 billion, up 17.5 percent year-over-year.

Regional and worldwide market forecast

In 2015, Western Europe is expected to have the highest growth in cloud IT infrastructure spending at 32 percent, followed by Latin America (23 percent), Japan (22 percent), and the U.S. market (21 percent).

For the five-year forecast period, IDC now expects that cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14 percent — both public cloud and private cloud are expected to grow at the same CAGR.

By 2019, IDC also expects worldwide cloud IT infrastructure spending to be $52 billion, or 45 percent of total IT infrastructure spend — public cloud will represent about $32 billion of that amount, and private cloud will account for the remaining $20 billion.

Given the current market development trajectory, this trend is unstoppable. It would be unwise for a legacy CIO to continue to deny the apparent benefits of cloud computing and thereby resist the Digital Business change that their more forward-thinking peers have already embraced.

Essential role of shadow IT and Open Source

«The pace of adoption of cloud-based platforms will not abate for quite some time, resulting in cloud IT infrastructure expansion continuing to outpace the growth of the overall IT infrastructure market for the foreseeable future,» said Kuba Stolarski, research manager at IDC.

In many organizations, a key driver of the rapid adoption of cloud applications and DevOps practices continues to be the unstoppable «Shadow IT» phenomena — where savvy Line of Business leadership refuses to be held back by the inherent limitations of their company’s internal IT organization.

As the global market evolves into deploying more cloud-native solutions – enabled by open source software, such as OpenStack – IDC belives that organizations of all types and sizes will discover that traditional approaches to IT management will increasingly fall short of the simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility requirements that form the core of cloud computing solutions.

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As this year comes to a close, let’s take one last look at the most pervasive cloud computing trends – including increased usage across the different cloud service models, the key business drivers and the impact of agile innovation strategies.

Cloud computing adoption has matured, with 69 percent of survey respondents stating that at least a portion of their computing infrastructure is in the cloud. However, 56 percent of companies are still identifying IT operations that could potentially move to the cloud, according to the latest market study by IDG Enterprise.

Survey respondents believe that business technology is a game changer, and cloud solutions are providing advantages from increasing IT agility (63 percent), IT innovation (61 percent) and improving the ability to access critical business data and digital service applications (58 percent).

Removing the barriers to cloud adoption

That said, IT leaders perspective on barriers to bringing these advantages to fruition differs from their Line of Business (LOB) counterparts. There is agreement, however, that a company’s biggest challenge to implementing a cloud platform is ensuring security.

But there’s a significant disconnect on the second most important barrier. IT leaders are concerned about integration (46 percent).  In contrast, LOB leaders believe measuring return-on-investment is a more important challenge (37 percent).

«As use of cloud solutions mature, more than half of companies surveyed are shifting from adoption to upgraded services,» said Brian Glynn, chief revenue officer of IDG Enterprise. «This opens the door for new and existing solution providers as businesses continue to look for ways to improve agility and innovation while balancing enterprise security and risk.»

Cloud service preferences are evolving

Three-quarters of companies are confident that the assets they have placed in the cloud are secure. To help companies have a sense of control, 80 percent have already created, or will create, a governance policy in the next year.

Also, public cloud (60 percent) and private cloud (57 percent) solutions remain the preferred environments compared to hybrid cloud (19 percent). As more workloads move into the cloud, the amount of data stored in private and public clouds will each increase to 25 percent and 21 percent, respectively, in the next 18 months.

Since 2012, cloud investments have increased by 19 percent, with large enterprises spending on average $3.3 million a year, compared to SMBs spending $400,000. Moreover, spending on cloud solutions will account for almost a quarter of IT budgets in the coming year.

Cloud deployment motivation is strategic

Current estimates show that 23 percent of spending on cloud solutions happens outside of the IT department – with marketing, sales and human resources most often investing in solutions.

Besides, even when a cloud solution is purchased by LOB leaders, the IT team can still be involved in the management of the project. And, in instances where IT does not lead the project, 45 percent of the time IT is still called upon to take over the project.

No matter who initiates the move to cloud, one thing will always be certain, CEOs and other senior executives that approve the budget are not enamored by the technology – they have a strategic imperative and they seek a meaningful competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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We’re nearing the end of 2014 and most smart CEOs already know their IT transformation game plan for 2015 – more digital differentiation woven into the fabric of their essential operations.

Every enterprise is now a digital business, regardless of the industry. That’s why digital service innovators are in such high demand. Meanwhile, many of the more traditional IT process-oriented jobs will diminish in importance.

Are you evolving your IT support team’s roles and responsibilities, as a result these key trends? Forward-thinking CIOs and IT managers have already embraced business technology that will do some of the more tedious routine system administration tasks via automation, so that they can redirect their focus to higher-priority activities.

What’s considered a pressing requirement? Many believe that it’s attaining parity in the enterprise with the freemium consumer cloud offerings that have helped to fuel the so-called Shadow IT phenomenon.

Public cloud gains more converts

However, there’s been progress that’s worth revisiting. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), public cloud computing services spending for the enterprise will reach $56.6 billion in 2014 and grow to more than $127 billion in 2018.

This forecast represents a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent, which is estimated to be about six times the rate of growth for the overall global IT market. In 2018, based upon findings from the IDC study, public IT cloud services will account for more than half of worldwide software, server, and storage spending growth.

«Over the next four to five years, IDC expects the community of developers to triple and to create a ten-fold increase in the number of new cloud-based solutions,» said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

The ongoing adoption of what IDC calls cloud-first business strategies – by IT buyers implementing new digital services – is a major factor that is driving public enterprise cloud services growth.

IDC believes that the enterprise cloud services market is now entering an evolutionary phase. It will produce an explosion of new digital solutions and associated commercial value creation – built on top of the pervasive cloud computing infrastructure that’s being deployed across the globe.

These new applications and emerging use-cases will be created in vertically-focused platforms with their own innovation communities, which will help to reshape how companies operate their increasingly essential IT function. According to the IDC assessment, it will also transform how these companies compete within their primary industry.

Mr. Gens adds «Many of these solutions will become more strategic than traditional IT has ever been.»

IDC expects Software as a Service (SaaS) will continue to dominate public cloud services spending, accounting for 70 percent of 2014 expenditures. IDC says the second largest public cloud category will be Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). They also predict that Platform as a Service (PaaS) and storage will be the fastest growing categories, driven by major increases in developer cloud services adoption and Big Data applications, respectively.

Next steps toward a digital nirvana

In time, I anticipate that we’ll see more multinational companies upgrade their legacy data centers and deploy private cloud solutions to meet their user’s needs – for a variety of different but equally compelling strategic business reasons. I expect public cloud to more frequently coexist with private cloud, in a multitude of combinations that will be limited by our own imagination.

Granted, there will be some technical constraints that need to be overcome – like making these cloud service permutations all work together in a frictionless manner. That being said, are you prepared with the right hybrid cloud management and orchestration solution in place? If not, start the due diligence process to select an appropriate solution. You’ll need time; choose wisely.

Of course, the now ubiquitous open-source software suites will play an instrumental role in enabling the transition to a hybrid cloud model. Certainly, the enthusiasm and momentum of the early-adopters at the OpenStack Summit in Paris, France this week was very encouraging for the fast-followers.

Besides preparing for a multi-cloud environment, I believe that the future outlook for many companies will likely include embracing a Mobile Cloud scenario, where the two most apparent enterprise technology trends morph together into a cohesive whole.

The combination of capable mobile devices and hybrid cloud computing services should provide an adaptive and flexible business technology foundation, so you’ll need to understand how they integrate into your existing IT infrastructure and legacy commercial applications.

Smartphones, tablets and personal productivity-oriented mobile applications (apps) are transforming how information is being accessed, used and shared in the enterprise. The savvy Line of Business leaders at progressive companies have already enabled employees to purchase mobile cloud apps for file syncing, and other requirements that may not have been met by the IT organization.

Some perceptive corporate IT leaders saw the mobile-first strategy gain traction in the marketplace, and immediately got involved with a proactive plan to build and support corporate-approved apps. The mobile application development platform providers, such as FeedHenry, offer the tools and services that together constitute the critical elements of a total solution.

These platforms enable an enterprise to design, develop, deploy, distribute and manage a portfolio of mobile apps running on a range of devices and addressing the requirements of diverse use-cases. Clearly, the best way for IT organizations to be relevant in the mobile cloud era is to get involved; preferably sooner, rather than later. So, what’s the status of your plan?

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Here’s the challenge. Your CEO won’t accept anything less than a world-class IT infrastructure that meets the expectations of his most informed Line-of-Business leaders. If you’re the CIO and you don’t want to rely upon public cloud service providers, then are you ready to deliver the caliber of IT services that they can provision?

Take a moment. Consider the implications. Ponder the impact of your actions.

All the leading public cloud services providers routinely design and assemble their own data center infrastructure components, due to their extreme needs for scale and cost control. Regardless of the cloud services company, a common element among all these devices is a requirement to run an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and various other purpose-built open-source software components. Gartner, Inc. refers to this trend as the Web-scale IT phenomena.

Why you need to adopt Web-scale IT practices

What is Web-scale IT? It’s all of the things happening at large cloud services firms – such as Google, Amazon and Facebook – that enables them to achieve extreme levels of compute and storage delivery. The methodology includes industrial data centre components, web-oriented architectures, programmable management, agile processes, a collaborative organization style and a learning culture.

By 2017, Web-scale IT will be an architectural approach found operating in 50 percent of all global enterprises – that’s up from less than 10 percent in 2013, according to Gartner. However, they also predict that most corporate IT organizations have a significant expertise shortfall that creates a huge demand for long-term technical staff training and near-term consulting guidance.

Gartner reports that legacy capacity planning and performance management skills within typical enterprise IT teams are no longer sufficient to meet today’s rapidly evolving large multinational business. By 2016, according to Gartner’s assessment, the lack of required skills will be a major constraint to growth for 80 percent of all large companies.

Gartner also believes that Web-scale IT organizations are very different than Conventional IT teams – in particular, they proactively learn from one another. Furthermore, Web-scale organizations extend the data center virtualization concept by architecting applications to be stateless, wherever possible.

«While major organizations continue to maintain and sustain their conventional capacity-planning skills and tools, they need to regularly re-evaluate the tools available and develop the capacity and performance management skills present in the Web-scale IT community,» said Ian Head, research director at Gartner.

Hybrid cloud computing services constructed in this way are better equipped to scale geographically and share multiple data centers with limited impact on user performance. This approach also blurs the lines between capacity planning, fault-tolerant designs, and disaster recovery.

When to plan for large-scale web systems

Demand shaping uses various techniques to adjust the quantity of resources required by any one service so that the infrastructure does not become overloaded. Gartner predicts that through 2017, 25 percent of large organizations will use demand shaping to plan and manage capacity – that’s up from less than 1 percent in 2014. So, you’ll need a plan of action – to take you from your current scale, to a Web-scale.

Gartner says that CIOs and other IT leaders must plan both the application and infrastructure architecture carefully. Infrastructure and product teams must work together to use application functionality, which allows an orderly degradation of service by reducing non-essential features and functions (when necessary).

Besides, the different architectures and the vastness of Web-scale IT organizations make traditional capacity planning tools of limited utility. In-memory computing and deep analytics tools are generally used to extract the required data directly from the infrastructure and from reporting capabilities built into software applications. This information is used to inform real-time decisions to allocate resources and manage potential bottlenecks.

«These operational skills and tools are currently unique to each Web-scale organization and are not yet available in most end-user organizations,» said Mr. Head. «However they will be in increasingly high demand as large organizations of all types begin to pursue the tangible business benefits of a Web-scale approach to IT infrastructure.»

Getting ready to scale-out your infrastructure

So, if your IT organization isn’t prepared for this transition, what are your options? Your search for hybrid cloud training services and consulting guidance should start with a requirement for proven OpenStack expertise. As the leading open-source cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform, you’re likely going to need IT talent that’s already experienced with prior OpenStack deployments.

That said, choose wisely. Keep in mind; few suppliers will have Web-scale infrastructure experience. As you prepare your list of qualified vendors, ask for customer case study examples and their use case scenarios. To help reduce the risk of procurement remorse, take all the time you need to perform due diligence.

Regardless of your IT operational budget, familiarize yourself with the OpenStack trailblazers, such as eNovance, and become versed in the language and processes of the Web-scale infrastructure deployment pioneers. Now you’ll be ready to embark upon your scale-out infrastructure journey.

Senior executives at large multinational enterprises are already demanding that their CIO has a plan in place to ensure that they can effectively procure public and private cloud services for their organization. In smaller companies, some IT managers are now expected to acquire the knowledge and skills to perform a similar role.

Are they prepared? To find out, let’s review a current IT resource assessment.

According to the findings from a recent market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), European IT departments still need to make significant improvements before they have fully embraced cloud architectures and transformed themselves into hybrid cloud service providers.

When asked to evaluate their current readiness to execute on their cloud service brokering strategy — where they become a trusted internal advisers to their Line of Business leaders — European respondents admitted to unexpectedly low levels of confidence that they’re ready.

As an example, 56 percent of European IT departments cannot find qualified staff to effectively support cloud projects. Moreover, 61 percent are struggling to up-skill their employees to effectively evaluate cloud service providers. And, 70 percent still need to learn how to make effective use of automation, self-service, and basic orchestration tools.

Why finding talent is still a major roadblock

If you assumed that — based on this insight — the skills shortfall is merely a European problem, you’d be mistaken. IDC interviewed IT and non-IT staff at director level or above in 1,109 organizations globally — including 304 in Europe (100 in the U.K. and 102 in both France and Germany).

The IDC survey confirmed the depth and breadth of challenge — like many of their counterparts, the vast majority of European IT departments still require a great deal of transformation and need to invest further in people, process, and technology.

«The use of cloud computing as an increasingly business-critical technology is quickly changing how companies and institutions evaluate, procure, and deploy IT assets,» said Carla Arend, program director at IDC.

She believes that the effective use of cloud-related tools remains the biggest challenge for IT organizations, while accurately defining costs and implementing charge-back models is a struggle in the business and IT relationship.

According to IDC’s assessment, spending on cloud services and the building blocks for cloud infrastructure has reached 25 percent growth in Europe over the past 12 months. But beyond the early-adopter segment, IDC says that deployments in the coming years could stall if IT buyers are not prepared to systematically tackle the known hurdles to a successful adoption.

Additional findings from the IDC study include:

• IT organizations see themselves as Service Providers focused on business priorities. Almost half of the respondents have achieved this change in mindset, where IT departments have embraced the IT-as-a-service approach and are ready to negotiate service levels and serve their business users like an outside service provider. Only 5 percent of respondents do not have this major transformation as an area of focus.
• Return on investment remains difficult to prove. Only around a third of European organizations are able to build a comprehensive business case for their cloud projects. Understanding all the implications, costs, and benefits of a transformational process like implementing cloud computing is tough, but without creating solid business cases it is hard to demonstrate the ultimate success of cloud projects.
• Ability to use cloud to drive business innovation and competitive advantage. Just 41 percent use cloud to gain a business advantage, leaving 59 percent of European organizations not able to take cloud projects beyond the level of IT infrastructure projects. The real benefits of cloud projects will only be realized if they are used to drive business innovation and competitive advantage.

So, given that backdrop, how can companies solve the apparent cloud infrastructure and business innovation skills gap? One approach is to reach out to consulting and training organizations that have a proven track record of helping other legacy IT organizations evolve towards these 21st Century demands.

Clearly, there are likely a few highly-qualified candidates in every region of the world. In the European marketplace, Paris-based eNovance is an example of the high-caliber consulting talent that’s available to create and deploy cloud infrastructures quickly and cost effectively — plus manage a multitude of web applications on the largest public clouds.

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As the chief executive at your company, if you discovered that you had some major financial standards compliance issues within your organization, would you be concerned about the risks associated with that exposure?

If your designated outside auditor had bypassed your internal finance department and chose instead to work directly with your individual Line of Business leaders, would you want to know why? Moreover, would you intervene?

Yes, it’s a rhetorical series of questions. And I think we all know the answers.

Did you know there’s a movement that’s already in progress that could impact your company’s provision and consumption of IT services, with a corresponding potential exposure concern that’s related to compliance issues?

Have you heard about the Shadow IT phenomenon? According to the assessment of several leading IT market analysts, it’s a trend that’s already quite pervasive across a broad cross-section of industries. It’s also been a hotly debated topic.

Who is championing this cause from a horizontal organization perspective? According to market research from last year, it’s primarily the marketing leadership.

The Need for Greater Speed and Deep Knowledge

Granted, some of the inherent friction within the ongoing quest for strategic business technology competitiveness can be uncomfortable for some people. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s all good. This is the path to progress. Let’s consider the upside opportunities.

IT used to be primarily about operations, cost reduction, and management controls. That’s no longer the scenario at forward-thinking companies. Today, corporate IT departments are being asked to plan, build or procure, manage, and continuously improve upon their organization’s business technology infrastructure and associated processes.

As if that weren’t enough, you will likely also expect your re-energized IT leadership team to help your organization innovate, grow, and deliver unique customer experiences. If you haven’t yet reached that pivotal point, don’t fret…you will soon.

Besides, you’re most likely to be highly motivated to navigate this key market transition. As an informed executive, you’ve made it a personal goal to insure that you surround yourself with the best available talent.

While business technology deployments can’t provide you a permanent competitive advantage, the timely deployment of new IT systems can enable you to build a strong competitive position that will stand the tests of time.

Moreover, while cloud service adoption moves towards ubiquity in the global marketplace, the ability to perform the essential task of crafting a unique and powerful business application development environment is still somewhat scarce. Again, that’s an opportunity, not a problem.

IT Talent with New Skills and Big Aspirations

Granted, we’ve already reached an inflection point where software-as-a service offerings have made it easier for any Line of Business leader to deploy an IT solution, just-in-time. However, being able to attain the much broader business agility benefits — that are truly possible with cloud computing — requires a comprehensive strategic plan.

Now’s the time to encourage and coax your business unit leaders and open-minded IT managers to work together and collaborate on mutually beneficial projects. If you need help to bring this essential project orchestration together, then consider seeking out an accomplished pioneer.

Companies with an evolved ecosystem of integration channel partners, such as Cisco, has the depth and breadth of information, education and guidance resources that today’s forward thinking leaders need to execute their multifaceted cloud-enabled strategies.

Why Cloud Service Brokering Really Matters

By increasing their inherent sourcing flexibility, your current business technology managers can more successfully assume the role as a broker of IT services — thereby increasing transparency, and better aligning your business and IT agendas into a cohesive plan.

A valued and trusted broker, in this context, is an individual or group within your own IT team that acts as a mediator between the Line of Business end-user of a managed cloud service capability and the providers of that service offering.

But how does a top performing IT department gain the trust to carry out this evolving role?

What’s needed is a comprehensive, consistent cloud strategy that will offer an enlightened perspective, provide compelling direction, and build confidence in your IT team’s enabling platform procurement decisions.

As an example, when acting as a credible service broker, just imagine how your IT team can now take full advantage of multiple sourcing options and become a value-added intermediary of cloud services for their Line of Business internal customers. Now, that’s the makings of a solid foundation for a meaningful partnership and substantive progress towards your bold goal.

So, are you ready to enhance your business flexibility with a choice of consumption models in the world of many clouds? Are you fully prepared to embrace the emerging hybrid cloud era?

What if you could deploy a new IT service shortly after you defined the requirements? And, just imagine the bliss, if your IT spend could directly translate into a competitive advantage. Predicting the ROI would be relatively easy. You would be the envy of your peer group.

Unfortunately, as most senior executives already know, it’s never that simple.

Typically, you perform the technology assessment due diligence up-front, you place your bets based upon the most compelling guidance, and then you closely monitor the results. It’s an iterative process, where confidence builds over time. Maybe that’s why new business technology spending tends to be aligned with a past success.

But this procurement model doesn’t adapt very well in response to unanticipated significant market events or the rapid acceleration of unplanned technology migrations. Moreover, tight budgets and other resource constraints can severely limit an organisation’s ability to react quickly to changing environments.

Outlook for near-term IT transitions

Worldwide IT spending will reach $2.14 trillion in 2014, that’s up by 5.1 percent from 2013 levels – almost one point higher than the 2013 growth rate – according to the predictions by IDC. Meanwhile, cloud spending will likely exceed $100 billion. Growing by 25 percent, IDC believes that the buyer preference will be slanted toward public cloud services.

However, the legacy approach to business technology acquisition – that could often take months or years to reach full deployment – just can’t seem to keep up with the most pressing needs for operational agility.

As a leader in today’s fast moving commercial environment, staying current on everything that has the potential to impact the status-quo is of the highest priority. It’s a well known fact in business, you can’t fully capitalise on a competitive advantage if it has yet to mainstream throughout your organisation and the core parts of your business operations.

That being said, is your executive team conversant with all the latest business technology trends? Are you already cloud-literate and very decisive, or cloud-challenged and somewhat ambivalent? If you don’t know the answer to these key questions, then perhaps now’s the time to establish a benchmark. After all, cloud literacy is no longer optional, regardless of your industry.

How to prosper from cloud computing adoption

Eventually, the senior leadership of every size company in all industry categories will need to become literate in cloud technology adoption. Furthermore, in order to tap the full potential of the cloud services phenomenon, that awareness will need to permeate to all your department leaders. In fact, at some forward-thinking companies, it’s already common for Line of Business (LOB) leaders to be actively involved in the buying-cycle. Clearly, that’s a growing trend.

A joint effort between Cisco and Intel, «The Impact of Cloud on IT Consumption Models» study surveyed 4,226 IT leaders in 18 industries across nine key economies during 2013. The global study findings uncovered important insights about how key trends are impacting IT procurement.

A case in point: 44 percent of IT funding is already coming from LOBs, either directly or as operating budget chargebacks to the IT organisation. Also, 69 percent of survey respondents believe that authority over buying decisions will increasingly reside with LOB leaders.

Therefore, given the increased influence of LOBs across all IT consumption lifecycle stages – including planning, procurement, deployment, operations and governance – it’s imperative for savvy CIOs and IT managers to rethink their internal stakeholder engagement strategy.

As an example, traditional IT leaders should anticipate a greater focus on commercial metrics, such as a meaningful ROI and substantively improved business outcomes. For some, that demand could present a skills challenge for employees. For others, there may be a need to update the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are used to gauge project progress.

Regardless of the challenges encountered in a particular scenario, survey respondents seem unanimous in their belief about how you obtain the best solution — IT and LOB leaders must work together. Respectful collaboration, based upon mutual trust, leads to triumph.

Boldly moving forward with a cloud strategy

So, perhaps you’re wondering, to achieve your top priorities, where might you go to find the best examples of purposeful organisation collaboration, value creation and cloud-enabled innovation?

Value-adding companies with a multifaceted ecosystem of integration partners, such as Cisco, provide access to subject-matter experts that can help you translate the benefits of cloud technology in ways that are relevant to all your business unit managers.

And, experienced business consulting talent and technical services support staff can guide your IT team through the steps to build a best-fit plan of action for your particular use case. These services and support models allow you to properly develop a cloud strategy that is right for you. As you’re probably learning, using disparate cloud services is a far cry from a developed and optimised cloud strategy that meets your IT needs and supports the business strategic objectives.

Combining all of these requisite skills will create a recipe for your own success in the cloud computing era. Besides, once you’re armed with these business transformation capabilities, it’s a sure way to be much better prepared to realise your desired competitive position in the marketplace.

Some people are never satisfied. These fearless agents of change are everywhere. They’re informed, confident and willing to experiment. They seek out the best business technology solution for the job at hand. They act on instinct. Yes, you could say that they’re driven.

However, they’re also at risk of being labeled as «rogue employees» because they ordered a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering and perhaps expensed it without prior approval. Sometimes they’re the champion of progressive projects that are referred to as Shadow IT — intentionally bypassing their company’s formal evaluation and procurement process. How can this happen?

Is it just because their activities are tolerated, or are they being encouraged? If so, by whom? Why would any business leader applaud a team member that breaks the rules? Maybe, the simple answer is that staying within the confines of the status-quo won’t enable a top-performer to fully apply their talent, achieving their absolute best.

On the other hand, having a defined structure does provide benefits. Clearly, standardised business technology purchase processes are often chosen to create a manageable IT environment. But those guidelines also need to be flexible, to accommodate exceptions to the rules.

Truly, this scenario creates a dichotomy; one that will likely occur at greater frequency — from within the smallest business to the largest enterprise — as more companies encounter rapid shifts in global markets that tend to reward the most agile and responsive competitors.

Ongoing quest for strategic advantage

As a senior executive, you know that business technology will always be a key part of your own forward-looking planning process. It’s assumed that information and communication technology (ICT) will continue to be the business enabler of the 21st Century.

But these platforms are often just the table stakes that enables your business to participate in the Global Networked Economy — they’re not the actual source of a sustainable strategic competitive advantage.

In 2003 Nicholas Carr wrote a provocative article for HBR entitled «IT Doesn’t Matter» — where he suggested that once a technology achieves ubiquity, then the focus must shift to differentiated applications that are very difficult for competitors to replicate. Likewise, in time, cloud will become commonplace. So, when that eventuality comes to pass, what comes next?

That’s when value-adding vendor offers of guidance on how to achieve distinct business outcomes will have the edge in this rapidly evolving marketplace. When evaluating cloud companies, such as Cisco, look for a vendor that offers deep domain contextual guidance at every stage of the cloud evolution cycle, for each of the major industry verticals, and for all the key stakeholders within your diverse leadership team.

This will help you implement a cloud-first strategy that brings together your organization, cloud partners and providers, and other technology vendors to form a portfolio and strategy that is open and secure.

Moving beyond basic cloud readiness

If your organization is an early-adopter of cloud computing, then you’re already ahead of the game. You probably know how cloud services can be applied to help you achieve your desired business outcomes.

But are you seeing the full depth and breadth of the upside potential opportunities? If so, then are you ready to respond — just in time — when your top performers are ready to act on the next wave of cloud-related capabilities?

According the latest findings from the Cisco Global Cloud Index, 2014 will be the first year when the majority of workloads shift to the cloud — it’s estimated that 51 percent of all workloads will be processed in the cloud. By 2017, it will expand to 63 percent of all workloads.

Furthermore, if you’ve been following the key business technology trends, then you know that the evolving cloud services debate now incorporates the advent of mobile internet applications — many of which are inherently cloud-centric. The virtual mobile office will gain momentum in 2014.

Preparing to navigate the Internet of Everything

When the Internet emerged just over two decades ago, at first it wasn’t clear what — if anything — would be significantly impacted. Today, we can point to numerous examples of how it has removed traditional boundaries to market entry, leveled the playing field, or recast a legacy industry landscape. Certainly, the disrupted media and entertainment sectors will come to mind.

But what we’re about to see will make that transition pale in comparison. The Internet of Everything will change all kinds of industries that may have seemed unscathed by the prior disruptions. For the adventurous among us, that means a vast array of new opportunities.

And yet, many of the same core business-related challenges will likely remain constant. New venture capital investment will still be in short supply. Top-performing employee talent might be difficult to hire and retain.

Meanwhile, cloud services will be abundant. You’ll have a plethora of choices — including public, private and hybrid cloud offerings. But so will every one of your competitors. Therefore, you’ll need something extra special, something that truly differentiates you in the marketplace.

If you want to win big, then you’ll need to apply the best and brightest minds — to uncover that special ingredient. Be prepared to seek help and ask for guidance from those who have «been there, and done that» type of forward-thinking ICT project before.

Value-adding vendors have savvy business consulting and technical services staff, plus a multifaceted ecosystem of integration partners that you can depend on to meet your primary goals and satisfy the demands of your top-performers. Be wise, choose carefully. Don’t settle for anything less than what you really need to succeed in the coming year.