Cloud computing and mobility: The CIOs top priorities for the future

A recent survey conducted by Gartner, Flipping to Digital Leadership: The 2015 CIO Agenda, concluded that cloud computing has become a viable option for almost any IT project and thus it is time for Infrastructure & Operations leaders to leave their “comfort zone” and bring their systems to the future.

Based on the feedback of 2,800 CIOs who participated in this survey:

• Only 9 per cent of the respondents would never consider cloud computing as a solution for SaaS projects (although this rate increases to 15% when it comes to IaaS projects).
• Although a significant percentage of CIOs still thinks of cloud-based solutions as an exception, almost half of the respondents have now adopted a new approach, where cloud computing is the primary and perfectly viable solution.

Yes, there are still reservations and yes, I&O leaders tend to be overly protective of their past choices, sometimes even “re-branding” them to avoid making the transition to a true cloud-based solution or clearly opposing to such changes. Yet, the survey clearly shows that, despite all the above, most CIOs now believe that the public cloud is the solution to their future needs.

Another interesting fact revealed by Gartner’s survey is that mobile devices represent the primary, or secondary, interface for a significant number of IT investments, while at the same time 71% of CIOs acknowledge the need for context-aware services, thus making mobility a priority in terms of system designing.

Being able to use a service on a mobile device is not enough. For end-users to find an application truly useful, it will have to be specifically designed for mobile devices. Applications are being accessed from a variety of devices and I&O leaders must take this fact into consideration and build them accordingly. Mobility is more than devices and infrastructure. It is about people and their experience with IT systems.