The Role-Playing Game — How Enterprise IT Should Prepare for Cloud Adoption

I’m often asked, “What’s the biggest thing standing in the way of enterprise IT getting on board with cloud adoption?”

My response is always the same: “The biggest thing standing in the way of enterprise IT cloud adoption is IT’s unwillingness to accept that business units (BUs) are already adopting the cloud.”

By 2012, BUs are eager to flout IT authority and circumvent IT constraints in order to solve problems now rather than see their requests languish in IT’s backlog of special projects, hostage to unreasonable wait times.
Those days are over. IT now has two options: Get on board or get left behind.

I’m seeing this exact scenario in our customer organizations as well. Customer BUs approach IT seeking solutions, without ever involving IT in the preliminary decision making process. They prefer instead to drag IT in at the very end and inform them of what is going to happen, rather than consult them about what may happen.

IT’s role has changed, whether they choose to recognize it or not. Their long-standing position as “policy police,” arbiter of good taste in applications, judge over whether an application requires IT policy and corporate security standards or not — it’s all coming to an end.

IT must face the fact that BUs are increasingly adopting the cloud, and support that move by:

• Becoming more aligned with the BUs and their goals;
• Providing security in the cloud;
• Managing service level agreements with cloud providers;
• Following escalation procedures;
• and advising the BUs on how — not whether — to adopt the cloud.

Don’t wait for cloud adoption to start getting your house in order. If IT stays in reactive mode as BUs make cloud decisions, they’ll end up with “integration” minus “strategy” — applications will be integrated on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis, creating a proliferation of point-to-point connections that is a repeat of the fragile, “spaghetti” integrations of the past.

IT must act now to get ahead of the curve — meaning ahead of BU demand — defining a solid integration strategy before the cloud apps start building out (or as early in that process as possible).

Does moving to the cloud mean that IT will lose some control? Yes. But I challenge them to be big-minded about it: Support BU adoption of the cloud, embrace your new role, shed your service-manager chrysalis and spread your trusted-adviser wings.

(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)