IT consultants are moving in a different direction according to an article found on CIO.com. The report discusses how IT cloud computing is making IT managers work in different ways to make their company’s productivity increase. Although cloud computing is the future, managed service consultants might have a hard time working with the new demands. Check out some of the article below.
As organizations move more of their applications to the cloud, they might find themselves needing skills different from what their system administrators now possess, according to IT executive panel discussions on cloud computing on Wednesday.
“The role of the IT person is changing,” said Greg Bouncontri, chief information officer for Pitney Bowes (PBI), during one panel on cloud computing at Wired magazine’s CIO Leadership Forum in New York.
“There will be some skillset shifts within our organizations that will be needed,” said Angelo Valletta, CIO of Sun National Bank, during a second panel.
Because the cloud will standardize infrastructure, so the collective thinking went, IT shops will spend far less time managing the servers and instead will need to focus on understanding how the multiple cloud offerings could work together and how they could be used to benefit their organizations, the panelists said.
Bouncontri said that while Pitney Bowes’ IT personnel have traditionally concentrated on security and operational efficiency, now they also must find ways to use cloud IT services as a “catalyst for growth” for the company.
In other words, cloud services are creating a more competitive environment for the bank. Bouncontri described an unnamed new financial services company that used cloud service providers for most all of its IT services, including core banking, CRM (customer relationship management), Internet banking and mobile banking. Existing businesses will feel the pressure of startups rapidly lashing together existing cloud services to create new offerings, he noted.
“The role of IT will be much more about innovation,” agreed Saad Ayub, CIO for the media company Scholastic (SCHL). Today, CIO duties are largely centered around the management of information using industry processes such as the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and the IT Information Library (ITIL). In the future, CIOs will have to think more about innovation as well, he said.
Go to CIO.com to read the rest of the article. If you are an employer looking to increase productivity, would your first move be to hire an IT managed service consultant to make sure your technology needs are meet?
