The CloudTalk Community couldn’t be more excited to have Tim Crawford as the special guest for October 9th Hangout Interview and Twitter Chat. Tim Crawford is an Analyst for Gigaom Research and an internationally renowned thought leader in the areas of IT transformation, innovation and cloud computing. Tim has served as CIO and other senior IT roles with global organizations such as Konica Minolta/ All Covered, Stanford University, Knight-Ridder, Philips Electronics and National Semiconductor.
In a Recent Blog Post from on GigaOm Tim wrote about the cloud and disruption:
5 things to prepare the CIO for disruption
Getting ready for disruption
So, how does the CIO respond to these changes in a timely and meaningful manner? Start at the top and work down. That means, start with a business-centric approach that takes the perspective of the true customer (the company’s customer) and work your way down.
- Business-Centric Perspective: Change the culture and perspective to focus on a business-centric approach. Stop focusing on IT as a technology organization. The CIO needs to be a business leader that happens to have responsibility for technology. Not the other way around. Instill this change within the IT organization that is both meaningful but also helps staff adapt to the changing landscape. This will take time, but must be a mission for IT.
- Adopt DevOps: A fundamental premise behind DevOps is the ability for IT to work more holistically across traditional silos (applications & operations). Brining the teams together to work collaboratively and effectively is essential to the future IT organization and their customers.
- Stay Flexible & Responsive: Customers expect quicker response to change. Instead of building a fortress that will withstand the test of time, build one that will adapt to the changing business climate and requirements.
- Engage Cloud: Cloud is the single largest opportunity for IT organizations today. Plan a holistic strategy to leverage cloud in appropriate ways. For many this will look like a hybrid strategy that evolves over time versus a haphazard approach.
- Challenge the Status Quo: Lastly, do not assume that the way things were done in the past will work moving forward. Many organizations struggle to find success with newer methodologies because they apply past paradigms. In some ways, it is almost easier to forget the past and think about how to start from scratch. Momentum can provide some resistance, but it is healthy to challenge the status quo.
Each of these steps provides a different perspective that helps shift the thinking around IT. It starts with the CIO and involves both the IT organization and the business organizations outside of IT. Each of these five steps provides the change in perspective to evolve the IT organization and value it provides.
Read More here: GigaOm 5 things to prepare the CIO for disruption
Tim’s other recent posts include:
- Could Rackspace start the cloud vertical movement?
- 8 Reasons Not to Move to Cloud
- Is the cloud instable and what can we do about it?
Unfortunately we only have an hour to pick Tim’s brain and share his thoughts with the community. Below are the 7 Questions we plan on asking during the 1 hour G+ Interview but that could all change based on community input on Twitter. Make sure to use hashtag #CloudTalk on twitter October 9th from Noon to 1pm ET as we will pull questions from the community! You can watch the interview live and view the community chat here: www.Broadsuite.com/CloudTalk
Questions for the Community and Tim Crawford:
Q1. When you think about the last 5 years what have been the biggest tech disrupters? #CloudTalk
Q2. In the next 5 years what will be the biggest driver of Innovation? #CloudTalk
Q3. How has #Cloud Technology changed the way companies do business? #CloudTalk
Q4. For the CIO of tomorrow is it a new job description or an entirely new skill set? #CloudTalk
Q5. What changes need to be made to embrace this Tech disruption? #CloudTalk
Q6. How have the users & employees changed the demands of corporate IT? #CloudTalk
Q7. What is this craziest description you’ve heard for What is the #Cloud? #CloudTalk
Read more about Tim Crawford here & Follow Tim on Twitter at: @TCrawford
Visit Broadsuite.com/CloudTalk/What-CloudTalk for additional information and we will see you on October 2nd and every thursday there after!
As always we would love to hear from the community and you can tweet the co-hosts Daniel Newman at @DanielNewmanUV and Brian Fanzo at @iSocialFanz and please follow the twitter chat account @CloudTalk_Chat