Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 47 | Page 44

CIO OPINION CIO opinion CIO OPINION “ IT ENVIRONMENTS ARE GETTING HARDER AND THERE IS NO WAY FOR CIOS AND IT DIRECTORS TO BE EXPERTS IN EVERY NEW ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY. ////////////////// Lee James, Rackspace How CIOs can ensure success in the cloud Business transformation is critical to survival in modern industry as new technologies revolutionise operations. Lee James, CTO EMEA at Rackspace, discusses how CIOs can accelerate value in the cloud and ensure they have the right support in place for their transformation journey. 44 INTELLIGENTCIO W What trends are impacting CIOs the most and how is Rackspace supporting customers? One of the biggest challenges CIOs face is ensuring they’re able to deliver value from their cloud and Digital Transformation projects at cost. A recent global survey of business and IT leaders found that several years into their migration, 40% of businesses said their cloud migration costs were still higher than expected. Ensuring that our customers are able to use their budget to best accelerate the value of the cloud in their organisation is key. One way we’re assisting them with this is through the launch of our new subscription cloud model, Service Blocks. This works similarly to bolt-on data plans, where you can increase your service based on your immediate needs. For your mobile this might be more data to entertain your kids on a long card journey, in the cloud this could be providing additional expertise to support you in a specific project – whether that’s a ‘Cost Governance as a Service’ or ‘Solution Architect as-a-Service’ to build complex cloud architectures. Lowering the barrier to consume these new services will enable our customers to accelerate their value to the cloud and ensure that they have the right support when embarking on more complex tasks. Six week waits for statements of work are now dead. We know our customers crave www.intelligentcio.com