The CIO is going to opt for a Cloud solution delivered by a subsidiary of GDF Suez. This subsidiary works on the smart city. « It is a good thing to deliver services of warmth or cold, but what is needed it is to offer the piloting » points Véronique Durant Charlot.
« If we do not make it, it is the actors of IT, as IBM for example that are going to make it, or many others, who want to sell the smart city. We have to sell the smart city, otherwise we shall become a convenience » she asserts.
Reducing the costs with the fear of the risks
The Cloud Computing appears as the compulsory way for information systems. « That it is about teams of IT or about the executives, everybody understood that Cloud computing is the way towards which it is necessary to go » notice the CIO.
According to Véronique Durant Charlot, the executives become schizophrenic in front of the Cloud Computing. « The executives want to go quickly towards Cloud in order to reduce the costs, and at the same time, there is a fear in front of the questions of security when we become aware of all which is involved. All this settles fast, by explaining the necessary precautions » she reassures.
Concerning information systems, enterprise IT must become an integrator, a broker of services. « It is not obvious » warns the CIO. « Before we would call a company as Cap Gemini, or as Atos. It is now necessary to work with start-ups. We go to see a cluster of start-ups, there are 650 small companies! » She notices. » It is not done overnight. The IT teams are quartered between the old systems and the internet. It is a so strong break, it is the third industrial revolution « she asserts.
A description too complex
The transition towards Cloud Computing appears as a challenge. The CIO notices that, consciously or unconsciously, the IT team of GDF Suez tended to complicate the migration towards Cloud. « When it was necessary question to outsource the messaging system, the teams in charge of the project put so many constraints of security, complexity, that the provider became afraid, and that it eventually doubled all his systems, in the point to be more expensive than the existing system, and to want to withdraw from the project » she remembers. The road is still long towards Cloud Computing.
Véronique Durant Charlot regrets that her company cannot go faster towards Cloud when a new incomer and competitor can build an information system in the Cloud quickly. « For our part, we have to carry the lead soles of the ERP systems legacy » declares the CIO. And this is a legacy, whose TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) cannot evolve.
