Can "too much cloud" lead to a "governance gap"?
In What is the Digitization Gap and How Can We Manage It? author Bali Kuchipudi warns about the stresses that reliance on cloud based IT resources can place on companies. These so-called “digitization gap” stressors are on top of serious management challenges already posed by technology silos and “shadow IT.”
Perhaps a better way to refer to the cloud-related problems Kuchipudi refers to would be as a “governance gap.” The issue may not be with digitization per se but rather with how IT and data resources are governed.
One area not touched on by Kuchipudi is the underlying need for enterprise data governance regardless of where data are being generated, managed, or used. Adding cloud based resources to the mix of enterprise tools places even more emphasis on the need for cross-departmental communication, unified metrics, master data management, and data stewardship.
The challenge then becomes: how do we evolve a management infrastructure that improves data governance while still respecting — where appropriate — traditional organizational and departmental boundaries?
One thing is certain: the development of an enterprise data governance strategy can't just be an "IT responsibility" given how data and its use in communication are so closely tied to business strategy and business processes.
Copyright (c) 2018 by Dennis D. McDonald. An earlier version of this article appeared in CTOvision.com as Does Cloud Reliance Lead to a “Digitization Gap” or a “Governance Gap”?