CIOs have quite a bit on their plates proper now with increasing roles, however in recent times, they’ve additionally been requested to maneuver past managing IT and change into a strategic enterprise chief to leverage expertise as a way to create actual worth for the enterprise.

For Tsholofelo Moeca, CIO at The Clover Group, South Africa’s largest dairy firm, this places extra strain on CIOs to make sure the applied sciences introduced into the enterprise ship outcomes the enterprise actually wants. Take cloud as an example. Whereas some have made the transfer and others are within the strategy of shifting, he believes that everyone remains to be making an attempt to make cloud make sense. “From the place I sit, it’s inevitable—all companies have to make use of the cloud not directly,” he says. “However there’s nonetheless numerous room for understanding and the creation of tailor-made options that make sense for particular industries or particular firms, which offer the precise enterprise advantages.”

However prices stay a serious stumbling block for a lot of companies, and a headache for CIOs, relating to cloud. Most companies which have dabbled in it have been bitten at the very least as soon as earlier than as a result of a lot of it’s consumption based mostly, which means it may be fairly straightforward to overspend with out realizing it. “It’s a value containment problem,” he says. “When every part was on-prem, CIOs may funds to a tee and in the event that they advised the CFO one thing was going to price R10 million, it might price R10 million. However with cloud, there may very well be an occasion that causes your consumption to spiral after which tomorrow you must return to the CFO and clarify you want one other R2 million.” This isn’t to say that companies ought to keep on with on-prem, he asserts, however it does imply CIOs have to hold an in depth eye on their cloud utilization in the event that they don’t wish to incur pointless prices.

A legacy problem

Once you’re accountable for digital transformation at a enterprise that’s been round for over 120 years, legacy-related points are unavoidable. For Moeca, that is certainly one of his biggest challenges. When gear is nearing end-of-life and not supported, you’re strolling a tightrope with no security web. As well as, once you’re utilizing such methods, you wrestle to search out folks with the talents wanted to unravel any issues you may need. “In a enterprise that’s been round for so long as now we have, abilities are additionally a difficulty as a result of we change into victims of our personal success,” he says. “We purchased a system years in the past and it nonetheless works so we don’t wish to contact it as a result of it’s nonetheless doing what it’s purported to do. That is honest sufficient however it means folks aren’t open to studying new abilities or updating present abilities.” However when everybody else is driving a automobile and also you’re nonetheless using a horse, it’s inevitable you’re going to lose the race, he provides.

He cites an information administration undertaking he’s presently engaged on, which is a key part in his present IT transformation technique. The purpose of the undertaking is to make use of the huge wealth of knowledge the enterprise has extra successfully. It simply so occurs one of many knowledge warehouse methods they use—an IBM Netezza Mako knowledge warehouse answer—has come to end-of-life and, due to this fact, not supported. “If this factor breaks, we’re on our personal,” he says.

Eager to handle this problem earlier than it turns into an enormous downside, Moeca launched into a complete RFP course of to search out the precise product and the precise accomplice. This was important as a result of he and his crew needed to determine precisely what they wanted, spell that out to potential suppliers, after which assess which options finest met these standards. “The very first thing I checked out was the product,” he says. “Can it do what I want it to do? After which I checked out who may present this product and requested if this accomplice is the precise match for the enterprise and for the undertaking.”