What is the role of the CIO in a multi cloud environment?

I believe that as a CIO, I would heavily invest in value based driven discussions with Business Lines Managers in order to precisely understand what are their needs and relating use cases, to make sure that the solution I will define and build for them will address these expectations and business constraints.

How important is it to have a cloud transformation strategy?

It is dramatically important for me because the transformation strategy will define the required technical choices, not the other way around. This is unfortunately one of the most common mistakes I see on the field. People go for technical choices before they have business considerations.

• What are the key questions a CIO should ask before starting to develop a cloud strategy?

Assess current maturity, current readiness and awareness, and then make sure these three things are at the right level before starting with the business conversations. Then based on the outcome of those conversations, go for a think/design/build process to come up with the right strategy and solution to support it.

• How does a cloud transformation affect the cybersecurity situation of a company?

I believe that most of the security aspects are driven by internal compliance and/or business regulation compliance. So, moving to a cloud model, regardless of the nature of it (private, public, hybrid), will induce a review of these compliances to secure their proper translation in the cloud model.

• What are the 5 most important contents of a cloud strategy paper?

These five are definitely not the only ones, but for me they are highly structuring in the strategy definition

• List of use cases and related requirements
• Supporting processes of these use cases
• Changes to be applied to the processes and potentially new processes
• Service Catalog initial version
• Service Catalog Lifecycle management governance

One other topic that is very important and not technical at all, is the technical teams reorganization. This is definitely one of the key success criteria that will drive adoption among the engineering and operational teams, and will expand the benefit that will come from the new solution. Without this human transformation, the transformation project is very likely to remain partial and to not generate the expected benefits.