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Is your CFO hot under the collar? It might be due to missed cloud revenue

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

Even though ensuring the company is iterating and innovating is more the CIO’s bag, the CIO and the CFO both have a keen interest in the bottom line. New research from Canopy has found that 81% of CIOs and CFOs worry their business will become uncompetitive if they miss out on cloud revenues.

The research, of 950 CIOs and CFOs in mid market and enterprise firms in the US and Europe, further noted that three quarters of CFOs think their business is missing out on revenue opportunities if they don’t have the optimum cloud applications and infrastructure in place.

It’s been a fine balancing act between CIOs and CFOs in terms of keeping the company on track. CIOs in particular worry of the issues their company will face if IT doesn’t move towards a cloud-based approach:

  • 38% globally believe lack of cloud would lead to reduced staff productivity
  • 34% argue it would result in increased time to market
  • 35% reported a potential risk of data theft

Similarly, nearly half (44%) said their IT department was not able to develop applications fast enough without adequate cloud technologies.

From the CFO’s perspective, 94% recognised the need to embrace cloud based applications, and more than two thirds (68%) admitted a lack of cloud investment was holding back digital projects.

“Digital must be in the DNA of every department to help the business maximise market share and revenue,” said Canopy CEO Jacques Pommeraud. “Right now digital transformation is only happening in pockets. One key to unlocking digital transformation is cloud computing.”

When it comes to profit margins, CIOs and CFOs are often singing from the same page. One issue which hasn’t been completely solved is downtime, which can cause both financial and temporal pain for businesses. Last week Databarracks unveiled its complete disaster recovery toolkit, featuring a cost of downtime calculator, and a roadmap for each department to get back on its feet. While downtimes can sometimes be unavoidable, it can now be comfortably mitigated.