Every CIO survey I read these days shows that the vast majority of business executives recognize the pivotal role technology plays in business transformation. CIO’s understand this too, with the more progressive evolving the role from the “Mr. or Ms. Fix-It” of the technology backroom, to a blended executive. One who combines technology savvy with business acumen to not just align IT, but actually integrate it within the business fabric.
This is all good news for our industry, but with a typical organization dedicating 80% of the IT spend to just “keeping the lights on” or maintaining the status quo, are these transformational goals ever achievable, or are they just pipe dreams?
Transformational goals are achievable. However, there is a heritage of IT complexity that impedes our ability to reach those goals. IT systems are growing in complexity at such a dizzying pace that the IT professionals who support them can’t keep up. As a result, business leaders don’t believe the IT function can deliver enough agility in an environment of accelerating business change.
The reality is business processes today are almost all dependent on technology. As such, IT organizations are increasingly being held accountable, so much so that the management of complexity is no longer a technical challenge, it’s a business imperative.
The first step in addressing the complexity challenge is to admit that you have a problem. There really is no way to stop the sprawl of technology, so we must recognize complexity as a significant issue, and by extension how it affects the business. Unfortunately, IT complexity doesn’t come prepackaged. It comes in various forms, and in order to tame it, we must understand the challenge across three dimensions. As the often quoted Sun Tzu said in the Art of War – “If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt.”
Dimension 1 – IT is a Tower of Babel
IT isn’t a simple structure with a unifying language, but rather, a complex array of networks, systems, protocols and applications from a wide range of manufacturers. What’s perplexing too is that while technologies are constantly being added and exploited to enrich the business processes we support, nothing ever seems to go away.
It’s obvious that as we add more technologies we’ll have more to manage, but it’s the way that the technologies are being employed that increases the challenge. Virtualization for example has matured beyond just supporting server consolidation to actually relieving capacity problems. That’s of course a great opportunity to increase system efficiencies, but it introduces even more complexity.
Dimension 2 – IT is Always-On
The way we use the internet today is vastly different than five years ago, and will be monumentally different as we move forward. In an age of mass consumerization, telecommuting and the mobile workforce, customers have become far more selective, demanding the information they need anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Consider for example the management of email. Today, we manage the delivery of email via internet-enabled software packages such as Microsoft Outlook. But moving forward, the generation Y consumer will want email delivered to their game console or professional networking application (if you don’t believe me, just observe your kids). These models will persist and again introduce levels of complexity that traditional management methods will never address.
Dimension 3 – IT is “Rich”
Rich content such as streaming video requires huge amounts of bandwidth, storage and redundancy. While today’s consumers are satisfied with downloading pre-recorded movies and podcasts to their iPod Classics, tomorrow’s customer will demand live content delivered to any number of mobile devices. All this means more complexity—not only multiple devices, but multiple content formats to manage.