There's an App for That!

There’s been great accomplishments over the last four or five years in technology.   Cloud services makes it possible to get an App on just about anything, anywhere and anytime.    Not only that, there’re pretty good too considering you can use most across multiple platforms.    And there’re not that expensive, sometimes even free if you don’t need all the bells and whistles.    There’re mostly intuitive and easy to learn and use, if not no problem, just get another one.   And to top it off you can get them yourself and fast through App Stores without going through the hassles of IT or Procurement. 

Cloud Adoption, Tip of the Iceberg? 

Cloud services are so wildly successful, many organizations don’t realize how many are being used in their company.    SkyHigh Networks published Cloud Adoption & Risk Report Q1 2015 estimates the average company now uses 923 distinct cloud services which is up 21.6% over previous quarter. “That number is more than 10 times higher than what IT estimates, highlighting the exceptional growth in employee-led cloud adoption” and growing.

Icebergs Sink Ships!

For a CIO this brings up some interesting questions.   Who is responsible for cloud services?  What are the risks?  What impact will this have on legacy IT models?  How do we harvest value and minimize the risk? Where will we get the resources?

This article looks at some of the opportunities and challenges created by Cloud services through the lens of Lean CSI which is “new thinking on delivering value with resource constraints”.