The first meeting of Australia's Leading CIOs has just taken place in Queensland. The event itself saw representatives from companies such as Adecco, Energy Australia and PepsiCo revealing their industry predictions.

The NG CIO Australia committee was formed in reaction to the skills shortage the industry had been experiencing, and the ever more affordable technology used to overcome such shortages. As previously revealed by the committee before the meeting, they had research which showed that while technical and vendor-specific skills seemed plentiful, strategic and conceptually oriented skills were in short supply. New government projects in sectors such as e-government, healthcare and education were also a driving force for organizing the NG CIO Australia summit (hosted by GDS International) where they wished to capitalize on national broadband roll out and discuss the pitfalls of cloud computing.

So what was revealed? Ovum revealed that the governance of cloud computing is too reactive, technology-centric and piecemeal and must be improved dramatically. The independent technology analyst warned the CIO Committee that cloud governance is suffering from the same flaws that are affecting other IT governance areas. They believe a new approach is needed as cloud computing, the latest in a series of disruptive trends affecting IT departments, cannot thrive without an effective governance framework that promotes and ensures coordination between IT teams.

Laurent Lachal, Ovum senior analyst and report author, said: "Most IT governance efforts are prompted by new regulations or by the need to keep up with uncontrolled SOA software services, virtual machines or public cloud services - whereby governance starts when the public cloud bill is much higher than expected."

Cloud computing makes IT governance more difficult by introducing an additional layer of complexity that those businesses need to control in order to make the most of its benefits. Cloud governance best practices - like cloud computing itself - are still in their infancy and Ovum believes the focus should, in future, be on enabling flexibility.

"Public as well as private clouds' ability to make it faster and easier to procure, develop, deploy and hardware and software assets will make the biggest difference. Cost and quality of service issues are critical but cloud computing governance should not over emphasize them at the expense of enabling firms to strike the right balance between effectiveness and innovation", said Lachal.

"Cloud governance is not just about control and keeping an eye on individuals to make sure that they behave as expected. It should also be about empowerment, based on a realignment of objectives and incentives to encourage behavioral change.

Ovum does not expect a ‘big bang' implementation of cloud governance, but rather a gradual build-up that provides an opportunity to launch and/or reinvigorate other governance efforts.

With so much change on the horizon who will be the first to capitalize and will cloud succeed as a future technology.

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