CIOs were once the architects of certainty. They built infrastructures, signed off roadmaps, and defined clear, linear plans. But today’s digital environment, defined by fluid architectures, unpredictable costs, and continuous innovation, has quietly rewritten that contract. And nowhere is that shift more evident than in our relationship with the cloud.

For many, cloud computing was supposed to be the great liberation: from legacy systems, from hardware cycles, from complexity itself. But over a decade in the cloud era, we must confront a harder question: Has the cloud set us free, or have we simply traded one form of dependency for another?

This isn’t just about cost models or vendor lock-in. It’s about power. About who truly controls your digital future. About whether you, as a CIO, are still driving strategy, or spending increasing time managing someone else's architecture, on someone else's terms.

The cloud has not just reshaped infrastructure. It has subtly shifted accountability. When the architecture evolves at the pace of vendor release notes, when your data residency is subject to geopolitical flux, and when cost visibility requires a spreadsheet, a magnifying glass, and divine patience, the illusion of control begins to wear thin.

And it's not just the cloud. The same questions apply elsewhere.

Generative AI tools are being adopted department by department, project by project, with little regard for enterprise alignment. Security ownership is fragmented. Platform sprawl is real. And decision-making is increasingly decentralised, not by design, but by necessity.

You may still hold the title, but are you still holding the reins?

We must ask ourselves: Are we still in control, or have we become custodians of complexity disguised as flexibility? Are your decisions unlocking innovation, or are you optimising cloud bills, managing integration debt, and untangling vendor relationships while your organisation expects transformation?

These are the uncomfortable truths we will confront at CIONET’s upcoming event, Cloud Revisited. It will be a space for critical reflection and honest dialogue about what the cloud has really delivered, and what it hasn’t. And more importantly, how CIOs can reclaim the clarity, authority, and strategic control.

Because the real question isn’t whether you’ve adopted the cloud. It’s whether it’s still serving you or whether, quietly, you’ve started serving it.