Cloud Head

A recent article written on Computerworld.com highlights the growing belief that the consumerization of IT and self-service trends will lead to a large restructuring of today’s IT shop in five years.  

The article argues that in today’s business environments, consumer technology is becoming a part of everyone’s workplace. The belief is that companies in the future will have to ensure that they are matching their enabling technology to the demographic of that time.

John Mancini, CEO of the Association for Information and Image Management stated”…in the consumer technology era, it’s the business side that has all the tools, so it will be able to trump IT’s desire to control who uses what and how.” The CIO will most likely remain in an enterprise, but will need to begin to transform into a forecaster and strategist rather than a technology implementer.

Please share your thoughts on this article and if you agree/disagree with the conclusions.

To read the article in its entirety, please visit: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239815/IT_departments_won_t_exist_in_five_years

As consumers, businesses and governments continue the movement to cloud-based environments; the BSA (a respected leader in shaping public policies that promote technology innovation and drive economic growth) released a report indicating the top cloud-supporting nations in the world and found that Japan tops their list.

The rankings were based on seven major categories: Ensuring privacy, promoting security, battling cybercrime, protecting intellectual property, ensuring data portability and the harmonization of international rules, promoting free trade and establishing the necessary IT infrastructure.

Behind Japan, Australia was ranked second, the United States third and Germany and Singapore rounded out the top 5. Here are some key stats to take away from the study that highlights the strides that many countries are making in cloud-computing technology development: 

Data Privacy – Most countries were found to be making significant improvements in data security but the study notes that while most countries have data protection frameworks in place, some nations (Brazil, India, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey are failing to gain parliamentary support for reform and protection).

Security and Cybercrime – Japan scored high in security and protection in regards to cybercrime. The lowest ranking nations were China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Japan’s security can be attributed to governmental policies as they have established computer crime laws that are compliant with the Convention on Cybercrime (also ratified by the EU, Australia and the United States).

Infrastructure – China announced a major broadband plan to accommodate a projected 800 million Internet users by 2015. Japan and Korea dominate the percentage of fiber Internet connections with each having twice the level of penetration of any other country. They currently have more than half of the world’s 60 million fiber connections. The United States leads in the size of its public cloud services market and the volume of active mobile broadband subscriptions.

Global Growth – The study also provides statistical evidence to support the notion that the growth of cloud computing is vital to global economic growth. The study indicates that IT cloud services will produce nearly 14 million jobs worldwide by 2015 and could generate as much as $1.1 trillion in annual revenue.

To read the full report please visit: http://cloudscorecard.bsa.org/2013/assets/PDFs/BSA_GlobalCloudScorecard2013.pdf