SCC speakers warn Cloud Expo audience of consumerisation challenge ahead

SCC has told the audience attending this year's Cloud Expo that the IT sector must face up to multiple challenges and come to terms with a new way of thinking if it is to remain relevant to modern business. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) January 31, 2012 - Following a two day conference at which both Chief Technical Officer Rhys Sharp and Director of Corporate Business Strategy Ian Sherratt gave pivotal presentations on the rapidly evolving cloud sector's escalating importance, attendees were told that many IT departments are failing to respond sufficiently to market disruption brought about by cloud services and the Consumerisation of IT. Outlining a raft of challenges facing in-house support teams, the experts warned that they must demonstrate the ability to keep up with the changing demands of a workforce accustomed to doing what they want, whenever they want to, on any device of their choice.

"The IT business isn't all about the technology anymore - it's about the user experience. Support departments need to realise that the industry has not as a whole responded well to the disruptive technologies that have changed the way we work, and that adopting a fresh perspective focused on the end point rather than the technological journey is going to be crucial over the coming months and years," said Sherratt.

"It should serve as a wake-up call that 30% of The UK's corporate IT spend is now controlled from outside the traditional IT department. The industry needs to come to terms with this, look at popular clouds like music and social networking and recognise the need to mimic that success."

Delegates to the conference were presented with learnings from SCC's experience of evolving services to meet with the demands of Consumerisation and the cloud. Europe's largest independent technology solutions provider has invested heavily in the data centre facilities and expertise required to develop and deliver services that can be consumed on a cost per seat basis.

In order to adapt to the evolving environment, organisations must address several key challenges, starting with a strategic review of critical infrastructure designed to identify the killer apps that would best connect staff with the business' processes. Teams need to identify which employees need to do their job faster, better and cheaper, and to look at how they collaborate at work and align it with the way people communicate in their time off.

Delegates were also urged to reconsider the complexity of their approach to IT solutions and adopt a cloud-inspired mind-set that is simpler, more intuitive and uncomplicated. The speakers told them that innovation must lie at the heart of what they do, and that while maintaining a radical approach was important, they must also consider how to set their data free while still retaining control.

As an increasing body of businesses begin to embrace such an approach, many are likely to consider termination of existing major change projects in line with a rapidly shifting marketplace. SCC believes that on the cloud era in-house initiatives make less sense, and predicts that using existing solutions and outsourced partnerships is likely to become a focus of activity over the next few years.

Sherratt added: "We need to stop agonising about how we're going to make legacy software run on an iPad and start a different kind of conversation between IT departments and business, to focus on data sovereignty and forget about operating systems, embracing a client-centric perspective and a more flexible approach to the end point.

"IT departments have to move now on these things because user opinion is already ahead of you. If you can't deliver the services they're going to demand soon, then pretty quickly you're going to hear people within the business asking why not."

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