With the economic environment for UK firms seeing slow and minor improvements, cost control is still king. As managing director for systems integration and technology for consultancy Accenture, Jeremy Oates has an overview of the activities of Accenture’s FTSE 100 clients.

Computing talked to him about the challenges and opportunities for IT leaders at the UK's biggest companies.

What is the biggest problem for FTSE 100 CIOs?

Jeremy Oates: Chief information officers (CIOs) face the growing business need to cut costs in a sustainable way, while also being responsive to a very dynamic environment and demonstrating that IT is adding value to the business. Given today’s business climate, the need for IT to add value has never been greater. CIOs need every edge they can get to create business value.

Although cost-cutting goals are firmly present on CIO priority lists, enabling ongoing consolidation, improving business processes, and delivering better customer service are equally challenging.

Addressing the green agenda is also a significant pressure and needs to be looked at both in terms of reducing the footprint of IT and using IT to reduce the footprint of the rest of the business.

How can these problems be solved?

At the highest levels, CIOs are responsible for deriving value from IT and managing the IT function effectively. Identifying and communicating the link between IT capabilities and delivering value to the business is a challenge.

Many CIOs assign high priority to and/or over-spend on initiatives that are less likely to improve their IT organisation’s ability to deliver business value.

Our research shows that IT organisations identifying and implementing performance improvements achieve measurable results that matter to the CIO and the business, thus attaining better business returns for IT spend.

Focusing IT spend on the most effective value-creating activities produces a greater bottom-line contribution than the same IT spend focused on lower value activities.

What are the challenges for enterprises considering cloud-based services?

Cloud computing is heralded as the next big thing in enterprise IT. However, there are major challenges as well as opportunities, and for most firms, the single most important concern is security – how do you safeguard enterprise data in a shared third-party environment?

Another significant problem is around the data itself – its location, compliance and integration. Take-up of cloud services will be limited until providers find ways of providing the assurances that businesses need in a transparent and demonstrable way.

Service-level guarantees can also be a major challenge. Dependency on the internet could result in loss of control, but that's inherent when relying on a cloud provider.

What is the biggest compliance issue facing FTSE 100 firms?

Security - the number of security incidents enterprises face is increasing daily.

Firms also need to address compliance with an increasing number of government and corporate security policies, standards and regulations, which serve as a key instrument in helping government to achieve its economic, social, and environmental goals.

You also have to remember that companies are concerned about the compliance costs imposed on businesses by this government's regulation and legislation.

What should firms do to prevent data loss and security breaches?

In addition to the increasing complexity of business operations, companies have to understand what their data exposure risks are and how best to address them.

In our view, business-sensitive data loss prevention cannot be seen as a single event. Adequate protection has to be provided appropriately throughout the data lifecycle.

The culture of data loss prevention, along with its supporting technology solutions, needs to spread across the company, increasing users’ and security officers’ awareness and encouraging behaviours that support the organisation’s need to protect business-sensitive information.

How does new cloud platforms such as Microsoft's Azure affect Accenture?

The emergence of new platforms represents a new phase in the evolution of cloud computing. It will have significant impact on enterprise IT as the current competitive and technological landscape is likely to change dramatically over the next few years.

The creation of new services models, bespoke applications, middleware and application porting on cloud infrastructure, and their integration with legacy systems, offer a tremendous area of growth for the whole of the IT consulting industry, not just for Accenture.

Microsoft is a key partner for Accenture and we jointly own Avanade, which is focused on the delivery of Microsoft-based solutions. Accenture, Avanade and Microsoft will work closely together on the implementation of Azure-based services.

What is Accenture's view on Digital Britain, particularly the next-generation optical-fibre rollout? Is 2Mbit/s as a universal service commitment (USC) good enough?

Accenture believes that 2Mbit/s is not enough, but we also recognise that we should make a distinction between the policy objectives of Digital Britain and what is happening in the marketplace.

The USC is a significant step forward to enable the government to be in a position to deliver its services online to all citizens. On the other hand, we see millions of people using fast broadband access well in excess of that limit.

As for fibre connectivity, significant investment is needed in the near future to bridge the connectivity gap between the UK and leading countries such as Korea and Japan.