The State of the Cloud

This column examines the state of the cloud. Digitization is causing huge disruptions and changes in all public/government, education and research and businesses, including enterprises and small-medium businesses. Many topics are lumped under digitization such as cloud, big data, Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, social, in-memory computing, artificial intelligence and hyper-connec-tivity. You can add to (or remove from) the list as you wish. Such digital disruption is forcing the Chief in-formation officer (CIO) to put two hats on. The first requires them to be agile, fast and flexible; and the second requires them to be effective, resourceful and steady. For the former, the CIO needs to enable busi-ness growth, drive innovation, adopt smart services and ensure easy access to information. For the latter, the CIO focuses on reducing complexity, freeing up legacy IT budgets, ensuring high-quality operations and safeguarding data privacy & security.