Despite suggestions that the cloud would remove responsibilities from the shoulders of the CIO, the converse now looks to be true – here’s my latest article for silicon.com on the cloud:

“The CIO is dead,” screamed the headline to an article on silicon.com’s sister site, TechRepublic. The story suggested on-demand computing would quickly mean technology purchasing decisionscould be decentralised to line-of-business executives, rather than being made by a dedicated IT department.

Two years later, the cloud remains a work in progress and the management reality behind on-demand IT has hit home. Someone, somewhere simply must be responsible for the policies and strategies associated to the use of the cloud – and that person is still the CIO.

As the executive charged with making the most of internal and external technology resources, the IT chief has to steer the organisation towards secure on-demand computing. And that remains a tricky path.

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