Cloud Changes Role of IT Staff at Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is one of the most storied brand names in the world. In order to meet the technical needs of the bottling giant, the corporation has committed to shifting their systems into the cloud over the next 3 to 5 years. Coca-Cola Consolidated CIO Onyeka Nchege mentions that his IT team will begin to take on the role of business professionals who specialize in technology.
At the Cloud World Forum, the Coke CIO proclaimed, “On the infrastructure side, the move to cloud hasn’t necessarily affected me yet as I manage two environments today. In the future, what I expect to happen is that I will ramp-down the number of employees I have, from an infrastructure perspective, as I move to the cloud.”
Regarding the culture shift within his IT organization, CIO’s blog credits Nchege as saying, “What I will be looking for in my team are IT associates that are facing my business partners and spend all of their time understanding business processes and translating that to services. That’s essentially what we’re recruiting for today – resources that can span from business perspective and have a strong technical aptitude.”
Having an agile IT team that understands the business is the key to operating systems inside of the cloud. Coming to terms with this, Nchege went on to talk about the corporate culture within Coca Cola. Although the cloud’s main function is to provide business agility, Nchege’s concerns surrounded around the agility of the organization he works for. Nchege admitted, “The reality is that as a 100-year-old organisation, we are not that agile, or nimble in everything we do. We are moving to the cloud in a year, and we have learnt that it is all about adaptability. Adaptability is the ability to foresee and make changes around that. Make sure you are educating your business partners about what the cloud is.”
