Given the benefits of Cloud services—from flexibility to cost savings—Connors is happy to wax poetic about what Cloud can deliver. Like anything, Cloud will take time to get used to. As customers gain confidence in the capabilities of Cloud services and see that Cloud is “doable and manageable,” says Connors, more companies will adopt them.

Prior to coming to AT&T in 2001, Connors spent time as a financial systems consultant in both consumer services and the healthcare industry. As a result, he’s keenly aware of the need for any “X as a service” solution to go above and beyond in terms of compliance and security. The key to dealing with security, notes Connors, is largely about “showing the customer how to get there.”

As cloud becomes more mainstream, Connors offers a caveat: beware of “Cloud Washing,” he says.   “People are putting the C-word in front of everything now. What’s important is how to optimize the move to Cloud.” One size does not fit all, he warns. He also believes that the shift to Cloud Computing and the effect of other recent IT developments (social media among them) are forcing leaders to change their approach to leadership. Connors, who earned an MBA from Rutgers, plans to do a leadership study that looks at the effect of technology on leadership.

Connors predicts the mining of meta-data will be the next big thing. Corporations are well versed in the collection of data, but combing through that data and coordinating information? Not so much. Providing services that give companies “a way of consolidating all the data into some system or systems that talk and collaborate and communicate with each other” will be akin to finding “the Holy Grail,” explains Connors.

Technology has changed a lot since Connors’ undergraduate days at New Jersey’s Drew University, where students were just starting a pilot program of receiving desktop computers for their dorms when he graduated. While his role at AT&T addresses the enterprise, he does wonder why more individuals don’t take advantage of the Cloud to back up their personal information. “It’s so easy and relatively inexpensive,” he says. “Believe me, I learned the hard way.”