By Thomas Wailgum | Aug 6, 2010 | CIO.net
Consulting, systems integration and outsourcing vendors must prepare themselves for life in the cloud, too, says Forrester Research. For traditional IT service providers, cloud is bad news in the short term, but is it really good news in the long term?
CIO — The liberating and game-changing effects of cloud computing on today’s IT shops cannot be overstated: On the fly, it seems, CIOs and their staffs are reprioritizing application-portfolio strategies, rearchitecting systems roadmaps, rethinking vendor contracts and much more. Prices may have dropped, but strategic IT planning is still as relevant as ever.
CIOs are trying to keep up with the flurry of cloud options now offered to them. (Whether some of those are total bunk or not, is a CIO’s job to determine.)
That “everything going to the cloud” mantra is also going to have a significant effect on traditional IT service providers, long accustomed to lucrative on-premise consulting and systems integration work as well as multi-year outsourcing contracts.