Whether through public, private or hybrid, cloud delivery is now on the strategic agenda of CIOs for resource-efficiency benefits. Indeed, as IT plays an ever-increasing role in business strategy, CIOs and IT leaders have the opportunity to influence the board and aid business growth.

What issues should CIOs keep front of mind in 2013? What expectations should they hold to? In 2012, Savvis looked at just that in a study of 500 IT leaders. Based on their insights, suggest IT execs resolve in 2013 to stick to:

1. Ensuring collaboration between IT and the rest of the organisation
2. Delivering operational efficiencies at every level and function
3. Aligning IT activities to become a business enabler

Collaboration
Although budget limitations remain an issue, CIOs are turning their attention to increasing collaboration within organisations, promoting projects that make them more agile and differentiate them in the marketplace.

Implementing a collaborative infrastructure solution is an important first step when pushing IT to the forefront of business strategy. A fully integrated IT infrastructure solution allows organisations to gain transparency, predictability and control over their cost models, time to market, product portfolio and many other business drivers.

IT leaders clearly understand how outsourcing enables them to focus and improve other areas of the business. In fact, 50 per cent of UK IT Leaders are driven by the need of IT agility to address business needs through outsourcing. The benefits of redirecting resources away from infrastructure and onto core competencies include improved internal communication, enhanced operational efficiencies and the ability to align funds to more revenue-generating projects that drive the business forward.

Delivery
Cloud continues to be seen as the leading way to deliver flexible, efficient and cost effective computing to every level of the organisation.

Rather than paying a fixed upfront CapEx or long-term contract fee, the cost of cloud varies with the amount of services used — a true ‘pay as you go’ model. In our study into global IT outsourcing, Savvis, IT leaders, told us that the top three benefits of this model are cost reduction and containment, infrastructure scalability and flexibility, and improved quality of service.

This ‘scalability model’ enables businesses to respond to changing needs and opportunities in real-time, delivering a tailored yet flexible infrastructure.

Competitive advantage
Finally, CIOs should expect the most from their IT solution.  IT outsourcing is instrumental in differentiating an organisation, whether through stretching IT budget to invest in innovation and revenue-generating projects, or simply delivering flexible, efficient infrastructure performance. Our report revealed that, on average, CIOs predict a 26 per cent saving of IT budget through outsourcing. IT outsourcing is viewed as a business enabler, boosting IT budget by a quarter and helping them deliver more value to the business as a whole.

While it’s no surprise that CIOs themselves are acutely aware of the business benefits of IT outsourcing, then, perhaps their most important task of all is to communicate them to leaders beyond the IT organisation.