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Jaguar Land Rover is deploying Google Apps to up to 15000 users worldwide as part of its wider transition from Ford Motor Company following its sale to Tata Motors.

Up to 15000 users worldwide will use the Google email and calendar applications as part of a move to implement a new corporate IT strategy, details of which will be published internally in the coming weeks. “I've been recruited on a change agenda,” says Jeremy Vincent, CIO at Jaguar Land Rover. "Six or seven months ago I didn't know what  Cloud Computing was but I was invited to speak at a conference on it so I thought I had better learn. I did and it fundamentally changed my attitude to IT and I started to preach the gospel wherever I could.”

Timing is everything and Vincent's 'gospel' fell on receptive ears. “We are currently having to copy and clone 30 year old mainframe applications, some 1600 of them. That means we're standing still for two years and adding no business value,| he explains. “When we looked at cloning the enterprise Outlook mail environment, I thought, here's the chance to do something different. I needed to raise my flag and say I'm here to change things. If you do the same as everyone else don't expect to be better than anybody else.

“There was a business case. We are saving a lot of money. But that wasn't the main driver. Cost enabled me to get the approval process signed off quickly but in the future it will give us access to a commodity solution across the workforce. It's been an easy job. Many of our workers use Google at home and as we know the experience of computing at home is years ahead of the corporate experience.”

Communication is key

To ensure a smooth roll out, Jaguar Land Rover has selected 250 “key communicators” from all parts of the organisation and trained them up on the new applications to help other employees get started. “People in marketing were gagging for Google,”comments Vincent. “We ran a pilot for a couple of months and won hearts and minds. Many of our senior executives want mail on their handheld device. Google allows us to put Googlemail onto the handheld device of their choice.”

This Google roll out is only the start for Jaguar Land Rover and Cloud Computing. “We are talking to other Cloud Computing vendors, such as Salesforce.com,” confirms Vincent. “Cloud Computing is and will be a key piece of my IT strategy which I wil be publishing to the company over the next three weeks. We are planning a lot of change over the next three years.”

This will, he expects, change his own day to day responsibilities. “Cloud Computing pushes the IT function function much closer to the business,” he suggests. “It changes the role of the CIO. Ver the past 25 years since the advent of the PC on people's desktops we have been putting power into the hands of the individual.

"In the 1980s, the biggest issue facing IT was integrating islands of information. That hasn't changed despite billions invested in Oracle and CRM and so on. It's important that as CIOs we realise that our role changes. If you are an enlightened CIO, you can see that Cloud gives you a greater degree of choice. If you need a new ERP system, you would have gone to Oracle or SAP. But Cloud Computing introduces a whole new set of real options which is a good thing."

Vincent does not buy into the notion that some CIOs seem to have that Cloud Computing threatens IT's traditional centralised control function. "As CIOs, we lost control when PCs became so affordable that different parts of the business could choose to do their own thing," he argues. "Every organisation I have worked for has had fragmented systems. The Cloud gives us the chance to get back in control.”

This is something that needs to be addressed, he concludes "Anyone with a mobile phone or a web browser will be able to access whatever applications they want to," he says. "That's OK, but where you run into problems is if those grow into mission critical systems or if sensitive data gets stored in them. We could end up with hundreds of fragmented Cloud applications. It's the same old same old.”