Canadian CIOs discuss driving a successful hybrid cloud roadmap

Cost remains the biggest driver for multicloud. To be successful, CIOs must understand the costs and benefits of such a migration, as well as factors such as life cycle management and the impact on staff. The good news – according to a group of Canadian IT leaders I met with in Toronto – is that Canada’s CIOs have never felt better equipped to make those decisions.

Driving a hybrid cloud roadmap that elevates business success was the discussion topic of a round table hosted by CIO and IDC I attended this week. A group of senior technology leaders gathered in Toronto to share and discuss how they are managing cloud services. Key areas of discussion included costs, life cycle management, transformation to the cloud, employee engagement, and vendor/client partnerships.

A recent article in cio.com on the multi-cloud environment for enterprise revealed that cost remains the biggest driver for multi-cloud based on a study commissioned by Oracle. The IT leaders in Toronto agreed.

Attendees discussed the cost impact of moving from legacy systems to a hybrid model. Systems upgrades and costs were agreed upon as the biggest considerations when embarking upon hybrid cloud adoption. However, the Canadian IT leaders said that post the pandemic executives were better able to understand cloud infrastructure costs as they relate to data management, privacy, and security. They agreed that this helps support investment in technology upgrades.

The conversation shifted to life cycle management. Most attendees agreed that organizations should have a life cycle management plan to better to map out costs of replacing or upgrading technology. Often referred to as version currency management, these IT leaders felt that a life cycle plan could be supported through vendor/client partnerships. They said the vendor could help inform and guide planning for a hybrid cloud roadmap.

Hybrid versus on premises, and private versus public cloud were discussed. Staffing costs and on-prem teams should be considered if moving to a public cloud. Flexibility for extra storage in the public cloud was noted, but costs for usage must be determined. The ability to scale up quickly based on storage needs was considered a benefit of moving to a public cloud.

End user consumer technology expectation came up in the discussion. The group discussed consumers’ experience and expectations. B2C experiences such as online shopping, expedited delivery and superior security and data storage are expected as standard services by customers. When building technology and cloud services, they felt that what a customer or consumer expects is what should be delivered as part of a B2B experience.

The topic of people, culture and leadership was woven into the discussion throughout the session. One participant felt that company culture was the most important aspect of technology transformation. Many agreed that securing new talent with the proper technology training was difficult in the current market. Talent teams were thought to be siloed by skill. In addition, flexible learning and transferrable skills or upskilling was considered difficult to accomplish. On leadership, the idea of the senior technology leader being a business leader was agreed as a post pandemic reality. Making technology plans and involving senior management and boards was discussed as being an essential part of the business.

In wrapping up the session, it was agreed that knowledge exchange and networking is key to learning and leadership development. CIO and IDC were thankful to host and be a part of this discussion, which was sponsored by Bell and AWS.