Published on the 23/10/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Further evidence has been uncovered regarding the potential for the IT department and CIO to become marginalised in terms of strategic technology decision making…
Delegates attending vForum in Sydney this week – the annual gathering of virtualisation’s faithful – were rewarded with the results of a new survey commissioned by VMware which indicated that they were in danger of being white anted.
A survey of over 2700 decision makers, around a tenth of whom are based in Australia, was conducted by Forrester Research recently and found that 42 percent of business units bypass IT to source technology or business applications directly. Almost three quarters of respondents said IT was at risk of being marginalised if they did not deliver solutions faster.
The new results only serve to reinforce the findings of Forrester’s earlier report, Asia Pacific CIO Budgets and Priorities in 2013, which noted that while in 2010 74 percent of enterprise IT budgets were spent by CIOs by 2012 that had plunged to 58 percent.
VMware’s revelations suggest there is little chance of that trend slowing without a concerted effort from CIOs and IT professionals to lift their game and compete more vigorously with public cloud and consumer technology.
The VMware Cloud Index 2013 does not reflect any ennui with technology itself. On the contrary 67 percent of respondents see IT as an enabler for change and source of business value. What’s at issue is who provides that IT.
A potential ally to shore up the internal IT shop is the growing appetite for private or hybrid cloud. There is clear continued appetite for cloud solutions overall – 79 percent of respondents indicated plans to adopt as-a-service solutions in 2013.
But the survey found that 36 percent of respondents will focus on private clouds in the coming 18 months and 34 percent will invest in hybrid cloud. Only 14 percent nominated public cloud as their preference.
Given that it will be a rare business unit that has the capability to develop a private cloud, or stitch together a hybrid solution, IT professionals will still have their work cut out.
