Contributed article by Somesh Singh Vice President, Product Management and Engineering at NetIQ

Make Your Cloud Conversations More Meaningful in 2014

Cloud computing has clear advantages: speed of deployment, flexibility, reduction in management costs, scalability of services and others. While these benefits may seem self-evident to technologists and engineers, there is a widening gap between the language of IT professionals and business users when it comes to understanding the value cloud delivers to the organization.

After many, many conversations with stakeholders in both camps this year, I strongly believe that 2014 must be the year that mainstream CIOs communicate about the cloud in terms of delivering business value to the organization. Discussions with business users are peppered with concepts like "capacity on demand" or "capex versus opex" to try and make the topic more accessible to a less technical audience. Although these efforts are admirable, business users are uninterested in these topics. Instead, they are worried about the running of their business. What they want is to hear about the clear, demonstrable benefits of IT. They want things made better and cheaper. They need services easily tailored and delivered to meet customers' needs and demands to ensure they have the best possible experience. They require operations to run more efficiently. They also want company and customer data to be properly protected, at all times. Ultimately, they want a healthier bottom line to the balance sheet and they need to hear a concrete explanation about how the cloud will make this possible.

While business users generally care neither about how services are delivered nor how the security of those services are maintained, they care deeply about the impact those services have on their business. Poor choices in the move to cloud, or poor security once you are there, absolutely undermine the credibility of cloud and the CIOs that lead their businesses to it.

In 2014, all technologists must make the transition to communicating with business users in business terms - both the opportunities and risks of trends like cloud computing in language that reflect the actual business impact they will have. CIOs that can provide meaningful advice to their line-of-business colleagues in order to empower their business will be those that are able to fully claim a seat at the strategic table - now and in the future.

##

About the Author

Somesh Singh is responsible for driving development and innovation efforts at NetIQ. Somesh leads the product management, engineering and architecture teams. Somesh joined NetIQ in 2011 after serving as the senior vice president of Research and Development and Technical Operations for Vignette Corporation, where he was responsible for all product management, engineering, Professional Services, customer support and IT operations. Previously, Somesh spent nine years at BMC Software and twelve years with IBM in a variety of executive and professional positions.