Enterprise 2.0: How Cloud Computing Is Challenging CIOs

Cloud computing is expanding at rates and directions barely imaginable a few years ago and CIOs will have to adapt quickly to keep if they want to keep up, according to keynote speakers who kicked off the Enterprise 2.0 conference. The event runs June 14 – 17 in Boston.

Among the dramatic changes underway, according to J. P. Rangaswami, CIO and chief scientist at BT Design, is the looming demise of the corporate desktop. "The age of the lockdown desktop is coming to an end," Rangaswami told a packed audience. He added that CIOs are "now seeing the age of the 'You can bring your own desktop to work.'"

The phenomenon is beginning to dawn because younger people -- many just now entering the enterprise workplace -- often possess better technologies than are offered at work. The younger technologists still don't occupy positions of power, but as they rise in enterprise computing environments they can be expected to promote many new approaches to cloud computing.

Another keynoter, Murali Sitaram, VP/GM of Cisco's Enterprise Collaboration Platform, said the rapidly changing cloud computing environment needs platforms to develop. He and a colleague, Jim Grubb, demonstrated the value of Cisco's My View dashboard, which enables users to access a myriad of applications useful in cloud computing.

Sitaram showed the "one-click" availability of applications that he believes will make Cisco's approach to cloud computing easy for IT practitioners. Cisco also noted its recent unveiling of its Quad enterprise collaboration platform that integrates voice, video, and social networking into a single workspace that is available on desktops and even on Apple iPhone and iPads.

Noting that many CIOs were puzzled by such exotic terms as "wikis and blogs" just a few years ago, Rangaswami indicated that CIOs won't be able to stop much of the new individual user-based technologies that are beginning in infiltrate IT enterprises. He posed the question of whether the new tools are "making us dumb or making corporations dumb."

He added that new technologies are leading a shift from individual control to the growth of the collective where "sharing becomes the norm."