IT: Still in the driving seat?

Shadow IT is reigning supreme in organisations and businesses are doing “IT” for themselves. But, is it and should it be business units driving all the tech decisions?

The idea that IT is no longer necessary is ludicrous. Don’t organisations still have to worry about security, compliance and cost management? And as systems age and mature there is legacy to be supported, as well, something that lines-of-businesses won’t be worrying their pretty little heads about, any time soon.

So, we still need IT. What does change is how we do IT.

Here are videos cases of IT at VMworld 2016 that showcase how IT is still in the driving seat and how.

(This journalist was a guest of VMware’s to VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/VNb_W8xaIsQ “][vc_column_text] 

MOTTI FINKELSTEIN – CITY GROUP CTO & GLOBAL PLANNING STRATEGY

The Citi Group CTO said, the key is to focus on what you are trying to achieve – address customers’ needs with resiliency, reliability and security all while using commodity components.

“The bottom line is, we can create those environments and have use cases where we can use external cloud providers.

“But I think the key would be to use a hybrid model. It would enable us to address those peaks and valleys in resource demand.”

He ‘advocates’ arbitrating between different cloud providers to get the best for capacity, resources and availability that those providers can offer.

Another key thing to do is “bifurcate the workload.”

Not forgetting, security…. and customer data is critical.

Finkelstein said, “You have to know where the data resides, who’s accessing it, who’s allowed and where they access it, how the data is stored and how it’s transferred.”

And to top it all off, IT has to make sure this is all done securely and in compliance, multi-jurisdictionally, legally and regulatorily.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/Sj31mpTcPF0″][vc_column_text]ALAN ROSA, MARRIOT GROUP’S SVP OF TECH DELIVERY AND IT SECURITY

Besides challenge from disruptors like AirBnB, Marriot Group has to contend with millennials becoming a bigger part of the demographic they serve as well.

With that millennial mindset, comes expectation for more and more digital services.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/mO-gMqU8fr8 “][vc_column_text]JOHN SPIEGEL, COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR’S IS/GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Spiegel talks about how his company transitioned from legacy towards modern IT, and how it was more of a cultural rather than technology transformation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/uLEmELbXFhQ”][vc_column_text]MIKE WITTIG, NIKE SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INFRASTRUCTURE OPERATIONS

Nike is a growth company of USD32billion in the last fiscal year. But, they aim to reach USD50 billion revenue by 2020, and a big engine for this growth is their digital strategy.

When time came for them to replatform their data centre, it also gave them the opportunity to start as a greenfield IT environment.

Wittig said, “Also to get out of our old data centre on time, we needed automation technologies like Open Stack, and we needed a partner to help us achieve that successfully so that’s why we choose VIO and NSX.”

Next for Nike? To move their internal corporate apps and apps for their wholesale business onto their new platform.

“We recognise we have to be technology-focused company if we are going to hit the revenues, we are going to hit,” Wittig concluded.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]JOSH WARSOP, JOHNSON AND JOHNSON ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY LEADER

The key takeaway from this video is that digital transformation, “…needs top down executive support to tackle some of this very large scale initiatives and do things like change reporting lines and change the way that IT interacts with the enterprise.”[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/OrbwurIeZk8 “][/vc_column][/vc_row]