Cloud, the new internet and tension between IT and users

Inaugural ITEX event provides multiple talking points

That cloud computing is not a passing phenomenon was one of the overriding themes at the inaugural ITEX expo and conference yesterday.

ITEX was designed as a ‘big day out’ for IT professionals, with multiple stages featuring case studies and roundtable discussions.

Around 400 delegates attended the day that began with a keynote session from Google head of apps product management Anil Sabharwal. He told the audience that the cloud represented a tectonic shift in the way that IT services will be delivered.

He has some impressive statistics to share such as the fact that every minute 24 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube, 250,000 words are written on Blogger and 4800 photos are uploaded to Picasa. Sabharwal’s day began early with an interview on TVNZ Business, which can be seen here.

Keynote speaker futurist James Canton provided an insight into where he believes the internet is heading – the emphasis is on collaboration and intuition. The design of the internet will begin to resemble the way the brain works, he foresees.

Microsoft chief operating officer for Asia Pacific Andrew Pickup gave an overview of how the company is positioning itself to who at calls the ‘cloud power’ – the shift to provide IT as a service. Though in an answer to a question about whether it would consider basing a datacentre in New Zealand, he said he had no announcements to make.

In addition to the cloud another theme is the tension between the IT department and the business users they serve. In particular the move by users to bring their “technology toys” into the workplace, and asking IT to support them. This was the focus of some discussion in the roundtable “The Future of the Desktop”. The growth of consumer IT has outstripped that of business IT but, as Miles Fordyce, University of Auckland director of IT Strategy, pointed out, in the end users are there to do a job, and the assessment has to be made as whether the latest gadget will assist them to do that.

The session ended with one audience member asking if the IT department had “lost control”.

The day-long event ended with an Awards ceremony for IT Manager of the Year, awarded to Ingrid Cronin-Knight and Business Analyst of the Year awarded to Shamendra Hurbuns.

ITEX was developed and hosted in a collaboration between Computerworld publisher Fairfax Media Business Group, Brightstar and IDC, with the assistance of an advisory board comprised of CIO and IT professionals.

There will be full coverage of ITEX in the next edition of Computerworld, published on 6 December.