infoTECH Spotlight Magazine

infoTECH Magazine

Editor's Letter

October 01, 2011

Exploiting New Opportunities, Facing New Problems

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 2011 issue of InfoTECH

With the alignment of business and IT becoming increasingly more relevant and critical in what continues to be an uncertain economy brings greater pressure for CIOs to reinvent their IT mission to compete and succeed. With new opportunities come new challenges posed as problems, and the CIO must navigate a new sea of choices.

As Napatech’s (News - Alert) Dan Joe Barry points out in this issue of InfoTech Spotlight (“From Hype to Reality,” page 10), cloud computing has now passed the stage of hype to reality. A cloud model offers obvious benefits: cheaper pay-as-you-go delivery methods, less operational complexity and fewer, if any, servers to manage.

A great competitive equalizer, cloud computing provides immediate access to resources, saves time and money in developing new services and, more and more, addresses infrastructure, platform and software needs.

In this issue’s cover story, (“CIO Insights and Trends: How IT Will Change in 2012,” page 27), InfoTech Spotlight interviewed IT leaders who shared their insights on the most critical technologies – social media, virtualization and cloud computing in the enterprise are just a few of the advancements in IT that are changing the core of today’s businesses.

Gary Curtis, chief technology strategist at Accenture (News - Alert), shared his insights into how IT will transform in 2012 and reveals why if you lined up all the problems that CIOs faced five, six or more years ago, in order of priority, and you did so today, how radically different those lists would be. 

With cloud computing and the various models offered, CIOs are faced with an important opportunity that improves flexibility, and automation. There are major differences between the deployment modes like SaaS (News - Alert), IaaS and PaaS. In our interview with HP’s Dave Shirk, he tells InfoTech Spotlight why the convergence of cloud and connectivity will play a large role in how business is driven within the next year and years to come (“The Great Cloud Debate,” page 22).

It’s safe to say CIOs in every major business are very strongly focused on understanding on what the opportunities they can exploit are in cloud computing. We hope that the pages to follow provide you with valuable insight as you make those important decisions today and in the year ahead. 


Erin Harrison is Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives, for TMC, where she oversees the company's strategic editorial initiatives, including the launch of several new print and online initiatives. She plays an active role in the print publications and TMCnet, covering IP communications, information technology and other related topics. To read more of Erin's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi