Umbrella Infocare was Gold Partner for CFO100 Programme

Umbrella Infocare and Amazon Web Services were the gold partners for the CFO100 Programme held in Mumbai on March 17, 2017. The objective was to build awareness and understanding about the economics of cloud-based services and solutions as CFOs are increasingly assuming center stage in IT purchase decisions.

Cloud adoption has become widely pervasive across organizations and increasingly requires CFO involvement as a strategic decision maker. According to Gartner 26 percent of IT investments require direct authorization of the CFO and 42% of IT organizations now report to the CFO.

Therefore it is imperative for CFOs to understand the benefits, the risks and best approaches to maximize cloud benefits. Cloud adoption will have strategic and long-term business impact across the company: it can reduce IT and business costs, and is fast becoming a powerful means for growth. In order to harness the competitive advantages of cloud, the CFO must understand how a cloud strategy can influence the organization’s cost structure and financial strategy.

CFO must be able to ask hard questions related to cloud strategy such as, how does the company’s long term and short term cloud strategy reduce IT costs and business while facilitating new opportunities. What are the security approaches while deploying public and private cloud. What is the cloud acquisition strategy and how does IT plan to fight shadow IT. What are the detailed plans for migration and implementation.

The CFO100 Programme is held annually to recognize the top 100 senior finance professionals in India who have made a difference with their acumen, attitude and leadership. It brings together 100 CFOs, who are clearly a cut above, to honour achievements during the year in cost management, mergers and acquisitions, funds management, corporate governance, risk management, integration of technology, finance in a start-up, green initiatives, innovation, collaboration, strategy and growth and people management.

Kunal Mathuria of Amazon Web Services spoke at the event outlining the benefits of pay-as-you go model, the unique ability of infrastructure to scale up and scale down per business requirements, and touched upon new concepts such as continuous improvements that enable engineers to tweak infrastructure to achieve increased cost benefits.

Speaking about the event, Gurprit Singh Founder Director Umbrella Infocare said, “CFOs play a critical role in influencing purchase decisions in enterprises, and we wanted to reach out to this segment of strategic decision-makers.”

A key outcome of the discussion was that CFOs were unanimous about the need for organizational agility and cloud as a choice to help flexibility and agility to meet business goals.