The final session of day 2 of the Cloud Computing World Forum and this all male panel had the fun task of drawing conclusions from it all.
They are (below – from left to right): David Terrar (chair), John Hall (Head of Strategy & Portfolio, Siemens), Simon Abrahams (Head of Product Marketing, Rackspace), Gowri Subramanian (CEO, Aspire Systems) and David Wilde (CIO, Westminster Council).
No surprises
Things move in a predictable manner. For example, when David asks if the IT dept should see the Cloud (which is, in this context, all about moving IT services off individual company servers and onto the ‘Net) as an opportunity or a threat, the managers answer as follows:
David Wilde: IT dept shouldn’t see themselves as gatekeepers but as enablers.
Gowri: if they see IT as a way of adding value to the business, then they need to position themselves more on the business side than the technology side.
Simon: you can only be an innovator if you don’t have to go through a baroque approval process. They need to see this as the future.
John: IT departments have a role and a responsibility to drive forward cloud computing.
Heads in the cloud
These guys are managers, they think in business-like, strategic ways. I keep wishing for Roy or Moss from The IT Crowd to jump up from the audience and say they don’t give a toss about the Cloud, unless adoption of it will have a direct impact on their job, in which case they want to avoid “enabling it” as much as possible.
But sadly Roy or Moss don’t go to this sort of conference.
More’s the pity.
Main photo: Jonathan Francisca via Unsplash
Is there a connection between the panel being all men and coming up with business speak comments? You mentioned that Roy or Moss would have directly addressed the ghost at the feast. Would the ghost have been more likely to have been addressed if there were women on the panel?
Hi Nick, No, not necessarily. If Roy and Moss’s boss, Jen, had been there, she probably would have come out with the same manager-speak as everyone else.The point I wanted to make, and maybe should have stated overtly, is that a bit more diversity – eg, in terms of either gender or role – would have been a good thing. It would have been symbolic of change/ progress, if nothing else (which is surely the message you want to project at a conference about the future)?Having Gowri on the panel was a start, but conference organisers really need to start digging deeper!