CIO Talk Radio Blog

One of the most difficult items to forecast for new IT investment is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model.  Calculating TCO was never easy for purchased on-premise software or hardware packages, but it is more complicated for cloud computing solutions. You'll hear various vendors talk about turning capital expense into operating expense, where on-premise software is a capital expense purchase, and cloud computing is an operating expense.  However, this is overly simplistic. To truly evaluate the TCO of a cloud computing investment you need to look at the following categories of spending.

Once upon a time, business was a lone warrior, braving economic down turns, battling off competitors, and bowing down to demanding customers. IT was barely seen or heard from. IT consisted of a few mechanics that kept the hardware networked, software running, and the pipeline of services flowing while business people bravely forged ahead.

Luckily Change Management is not dependent on luck!  There are no shortcuts.  A detailed plan needs to be in place, along with the right people, a leader who is a communicator and relationship manager, transparency, best processes, solid technology, and lots and lots of risk management brain storming to ensure a fix will be there when the unexpected unknowable happens during execution. As Harish Ramani, CIO of Constellation Brands reminisced, when physically moving a data center you plan for sideways rain, and when sideways rain happens ( surprise, it did happen!), you have tarps ready to handle it. (Ramani, 24:41 - 25:28) Or you have vendors ready to step in and help with the things where you lack expertise. "Do things right the first time, and you will actually save money." (Bonfante, 26:47-26:57)

Not too many of us like change. Change introduces the unknowable, leaves us open to the unpredictable, may deny us control, and puts us face-to-face with the possibility of failure. Luck may rescue us and bring success, but achieving that success can be a very scary process.  So, how do you make change management a successful, repeatable process, instead of hoping for luck?

Recently I was on the CIO Talk Radio and we were discussing on the emerging and changing role of the Head of IT function and I was pleasantly surprised with the co-speaker introducing himself as the Head of CPO (Chief Process Officer).  During the course of the interview, he explained that he preferred the title of the CPO v/s. CIO as it describes the real role that he is playing.