Colt named Thought Leader of the Year at CIO Europe Summit

I joined a number of my colleagues at the September 2011 CIO Europe Summit last week and am proud to report that Colt was voted ‘Thought Leader of the Year’ by the CIOs attending the event.

For those not familiar with the Summit, it provides a great opportunity for senior level executives from across Europe to come together and examine the challenges facing today’s European CIO.  The event is in its third year and consists of formal workshops, presentations and pre-arranged 1-2-1s as well as the more informal networking opportunities that these types of closed gatherings encourage.

The Summit last week attracted CIOs from over 50 different organisations.  Those taking part were asked to vote for just three awards designed to recognise individuals and organisations deemed the most influential during the course of the event.
 
Colt was voted Thought Leader of the Year; Nikk Gilbert CIO of the US Navy was awarded Achievement of the Year and Afzal Ballim, CIO for International Committee of the Red Cross, was named CIO of the Year. Awards were then presented at the closing ceremony.

Colt received the Thought Leader award following the opening keynote presentation given by Simon Walsh, executive vice president of Colt Enterprise Services.  The presentation explored some of the key challenges of making cloud computing work across Europe including:
 

• Ownership, responsibility and location of data
• Fragmented compliance and regulation across Europe due to varying laws in each country
• Changes to software license management caused by virtualisation and cloud services

Delegates voting for Colt in the Thought Leader category clearly highlighted how they thought that we are heading in the right direction.

Afzal Ballim, CIO at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and winner of the CIO of the Year award CIO Summit Europe,  commented "An insightful and thought-provoking presentation from Colt, that cut through some of the myth and mystique of cloud computing to discuss the practical considerations necessary for us as leaders to approach this exciting alternative to classical ways of supporting our organisations.”
 
Emmanuel Gaudin, CIO of Lagardere Services, commented, “Great to see an honest account and yet chilling reality of the underlying issues within data protection and risk.”

Whilst our own research shows that Cloud computing is expected to be a dominant operating model by 2014, we know that it won’t be the solution for all technologies in all businesses.  Tim Grieveson, CIO and senior IT director at Constellium summed this up  “[Colt’s] solution considers not only the economics of delivery but also allows the end customer to be flexible, identify the risks and when best to use and more fundamentally when not to use cloud as a sustainable method for delivering services to your business.”
 
Feedback from customers, partners or the market is important to us when it comes to setting direction.  The event provided a great opportunity to spend time with the organisations that will be adopting cloud computing during the next few years .  It was very satisfying to get such a ringing endorsement for our approach.