Aligning IT with the Business
Companies today are realizing that there has never been a greater need for IT to become—and be seen as—a true corporate asset that delivers ongoing business value. Software has moved from not only being a tool to help people communicate and work together better, but a platform that connects people with the information and business processes they need to make better decisions. From the infrastructure to the end user, software plays a key role in empowering people, which helps drive the business forward.
If people are the key to driving business results, the question becomes: What kind of IT infrastructure do you need to support a people-ready business? The answer is simple. You need an IT infrastructure that can help advance rather than impede your business. In practical terms, this calls for a new approach to supporting the evolving needs of the business—today and tomorrow.
That's easy to say, but harder to do. Large to medium-sized organizations deal with a range of IT complexities, from brittle business processes that rely on disparate data sources to monolithic line-of-business (LOB) applications built from complex development tools and processes. Combined, these factors can impede IT and development organizations from being agile and adaptive enough to become true partners of a business. For example, many customers use applications that were written in static form—"hard-coded" for a specific purpose—which makes them resistant to change. In addition, these applications often lack the ability to interoperate easily, which makes it difficult for people and processes within an organization to exchange information. This lack of flexibility impedes IT departments' efforts to deploy new software with new functionality as businesses grow and change. That explains, from an IT perspective, why it is not easy for companies to achieve business agility.