The Science and Art of Business Leadership

DISA Chief Technologist States Plan for Cloud

By G C Network | September 23, 2008

In an interview reported on in this month’s Military Information Technology magazine, David Mihelcic, DISA Chief Technology Officer, has laid out his goal for the agency’s cloud computing initiative. As…

Google, GeoEye, Twitter. What a Combination!

By G C Network | September 23, 2008

On September 9th, Bob Lozano posted his kudos to GeoEye for a successful launch of GeoEye-1. (Hey Bob! Where’s that post on your “cloud failure” last week?) According to their…

RightScale goes Transcloud

By G C Network | September 22, 2008

Over the weekend, Maureen O’Gara of SYS-CON media reported that RightScale is now offering a “first in industry” capability to provide application management across multiple cloud infrastructures. It now offers…

A Bill to Outlaw Cloud Computing…..

By G C Network | September 19, 2008

… is what we may see if we don’t educate our lawmakers now! That seemed to be one of the main point at last week’s Google workshop in DC. Berin…

NCOIC and Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 18, 2008

Yesterday the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) had a very good session on cloud computing during their plenary session in Falls Church, VA. Led by NCOIC’s Bob Marcus, speakers…

Military Information Technology Cloud Computing Collaboration

By G C Network | September 17, 2008

Today, we’re happy to announce what we believe to be an industry first. “Military Information Technology Magazine“, as the publication of record for the defense information technology community, is collaborating…

Is 99.999% reliability good enough?

By G C Network | September 16, 2008

According to Reuven Cohen in his recent post, Cloud Failure: The Myth of Nines , the whole concept of reliability may be meaningless. “In the case of a physical failure…

You Probably Use Cloud Computing Already.

By G C Network | September 15, 2008

56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. 34% store personal photos online. 29% use online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop…

20 Real-Life Challenges of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 12, 2008

Nikita Ivanov of GridGain offers some excellent insight into the nuts and bolts of getting the cloud to work. Definitely worth a read. To summarize: Most likely you do NOT…

3Tera Announces Global Cloud Services

By G C Network | September 11, 2008

Last week, 3Tera has announced the availability of global cloud services, based on their AppLogic grid operating system. 3Tera is currently running data centers in seven countries (United States, Japan,…


Business leadership is both science and art. The scientific aspects revolve around finance, organization, products and service. Artistic aspects include relationships, market trajectories and business strategies. While many focus on the science through books and training, the art of business is best learned from real practitioners.  That is why I jumped at the chance to meet Dimension Data’s Steve Nola during the company’s analyst event, Perspectives 2015, in Prague, Czech Republic. Steve is the company’s ITaaS Group Executive and prior to this, served separate stints as Chief Executive Officer of the Cloud Business Unit and Dimension Data Australia region. Meeting over dinner, Steve shared his views on how businesses should deal with today’s dynamic information technology environment.
 In his opinion, cloud computing is destined to harness more of the IT market and organizations that participate in just about any industry must decide what they are going to do about it. 
“Cloud a key change agent for business and the critical skill in this environment is managing the rate of change within your enterprise”, says Steve. “This is crucial because change drives innovation and innovation fuels the internal experimentation needed to maintain marketplace relevancy.”
Businesses must also build and maintain an effective partner ecosystem. This actually reduces business risks as IT transitions to the “as-a-service” model. IT professionals must build and maintain a fluency in bridging technology to business outcomes. Companies must also use cloud services in order to tailor technology’s contribution to the chosen business strategy.
While virtualization is a necessary component of any IT modernization strategy, virtualization without optimization for cloud may preclude the necessary alignment of IT with today’s dynamic business models. This wise counsel highlights why business science and business art must be
synergistic. It also puts a spotlight on why a corporate IT ecosystem is also needed. Modern business models are created, launched, modified and retired quickly. In some industries such a cycle could transpire over a timeframe measured in hours. A traditional corporately owned IT platform is unable to economically deal with such a fast pace of change. This is why traditional IT support models in some verticals are rapidly giving way to shared IT infrastructures and IT as a service. Traditional architectures aren’t designed with an ability to cycle up and down. They are also not typically metered and monitored. Companies facing this type of industry disruption need trusted IT service partners. According to Steve, enterprise IT product vendors are being disintermediated by this transition to the IT service provider model. “2009 saw a $142B decrease in enterprise IT product industry revenue. That money went to the IT as a service market” 
Dimension Data itself is not immune to these forces. As a global IT service provider, it too needs to have a strong and reliable partner ecosystem. The importance of partners to Dimension Data has been made obvious by winning 23 channel partner awards at the most recent Cisco Partner Summit and Deloitte’s selection of its Managed Cloud Platform for the management firm’s business transformation clients.
 
The key takeaway from this discussion is that successful IT leaders effectively leverage both business science and business art as day to day leadership tools.
https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/569759/dimension-data-bring-tour-de-france-billions-cycling-fans/

( This content is being syndicated through multiple channels. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of GovCloud Network, GovCloud Network Partners or any other corporation or organization.)

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