The Role of IT in the Cloud Era

As more enterprises shift their workloads to the cloud, the role of IT is changing. While many IT professionals have wondered if the introduction of the cloud era meant the end of enterprise IT, the reality is more nuanced. Rather than their jobs being strictly outsourced and eliminated, roles are emerging as more strategically aligned with business objectives.

The chief information officer (CIO) is more likely today to be sitting at the table with board members, leading discussions of how to achieve business goals, rather than assuming a reactive role and waiting for solution requests or solving system issues. The overall effect is that, instead of being in a maintenance position, IT is positioned in forward-thinking organizations as strategic leaders.

Aligning With Business Objectives: One of the key changes happening in the cloud era is that IT teams are more likely to be at the center of business strategy. They are seeing better success with IT initiatives because there is a clear line between challenges and goals and the technology that provides solutions and equips the business for its next steps.

Smaller Projects, Better Success Rates: Instead of sweeping technology changes that happen with a single go-live date, IT teams are implementing smaller changes. This might mean deploying a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for a particular department that improves productivity and features a flexible and customizable end-user interface. These bite-size projects are easily managed, and their actual benefits can be assessed against expectations with simple metrics.

Ramping up the Security Focus: Along with the ways that software, infrastructure and other IT elements are delivered and managed in the cloud era, security is also undergoing an important evolution. IT has gone from having a focus on securing the network perimeter to contemplating whether there even is a true perimeter.

From data moving in and out of cloud applications to the multiplying endpoints with mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, security looks much different than it did a decade ago. Adding to the complexity is the changing nature of threats, with enterprises often requiring highly automated threat response tools to handle the number and scope of threats.

Many enterprises are turning to unified endpoint management to ensure that data is sandboxed into separate containers, allowing users to only access the data they need for their jobs. This approach is particularly useful because so many workers prefer to access resources through mobile devices.

Encryption is also an important security strategy for protecting data as it moves in and out of the cloud, so that even if there is a breach, the data is essentially useless to the hacker. Enterprises can also use app blacklisting and other filtering tools to ensure that users are limited in their ability to elevate risk to the organization.

Is your enterprise IT department experiencing the impact of the cloud era? To learn more about how to secure your systems and apps in a cloud environment, contact us at AMD Technology.