IT Technology Trends - What We are Seeing Thus Far... Vol 7 rel 5

A Hard Look at IT

IT has been traditionally been viewed as either vertically (focused on line of business or isolated industries) or horizontally (focused on business processes or enabling technologies). With today’s technology trends, a new paradigm has emerged, the old lines become blurred, thus creating a systemic view that illuminates new business opportunities and creative ways of solving problems.

IT is no longer satisfied in being the Data Center Monitor, or the Endpoint fixer.  IT leaders are transforming their enterprise into the engine of the vehicle of growth.  They are modernizing the infrastructure while delivering new approaches to delivering efficient tools, approaches, and support to their customers. No longer working in a vacuum, the IT mindset embraced the business model as the nucleic driver of their technology decisions.   

IT architectures – have operated much like it is on fad diets – ever expanding and contracting, e.g., Distributed systems and functions then dieting again collapsing to centralized systems and silos.  The effective result is the only temporary, much like fad diets – you weight eventually goes back to obese. 

What the mindset today has brought about is the question of whether this should continue?  Should IT continue the promises of fad diets that result in the expansion / contraction of system delivery, or stop and rethink what the end goal should be? 

Rather than solely focus on their own waist lines of function delivery and the best way to operate – IT leaders are turn that on its head and changing the delivery model to focus on processes and delivery outcomes.  This breaks the cycle of self-focus, and shifts its view on the deliverable – that is., efficiency and value, the best bang for their buck.

The Net

Its traditional delivery models are tapping out when faced with today’s innovation and changes.  The Re-Purposing removes the self-reliance/focus and lays out a roadmap for leaders to overhaul its pursuits to align with the very business goals that if professes to support.

What Does This Mean?

From the Top Down

• Erasing your charter/mission to align with the Company’s vision. There is a reason why CIOs don’t have the key to the executive wash room. No explanation needed.

• Budgeting for Company priorities – Outcome based budgeting, i.e., focusing on dynamic delivery models to support the every changing priorities of the business. Many older IT shops have a time-honored budget planning process that goes something like this: Business leaders make a list of “wants” and categorize them by priority and cost. These projects typically absorb most of its discretionary budget, with care and maintenance claiming the rest. This basic budget blueprint will be good for a year, until the planning process begins again.

• Infrastructure Business Model – Change to Automated tech stack – provide the foundation needed to support rapid development and deployment of flexible solutions that, in turn, enable innovation and growth. In specific, self service automation.  Just because we don’t embrace the cloud wholeheartedly, doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from their processes. An important concept popularized by some cloud vendors. Through a web-based portal, users can access IT resources from a catalog of standardized service options. The automated system controls the provisioning process and enforces role-based access, approvals, and policy-based controls. This can help mitigate risk and accelerate the marshaling of resources. As one oft-repeated adage reminds us, “The efficiency of an IT process is inversely correlated to the number of unique humans it takes to accomplish it.”

• Reorganizing teams and breaking down silos: In many IT organizations, workers are organized in siloes by function or skillset. For example, network engineering is distinct from QA, which is different from system administration. Transforming this model begins by breaking down skillset silos and reorganizing IT workers into multi-skill, results-oriented teams. These teams focus not on a specific development step—say, early-stage design or requirements—but more holistically on delivering desired outcomes.

Objections from the Peanut Gallery

Now we understand the nay-sayer’s position. By challenging assumptions and transforming systems you are asking for an invitation to dysfunction.  Technology will always be complex and require architects and engineers to guide you through the weeds.

However, as with everything, when new, technologies often seem opaque along with the possibilities they offer. But as we have seen time and time again, yesterday’s disruptive enigma quickly evolves into technology fluency.  Consider the smartphone, social media, etc.  Children and grandparents alike now share a common understanding and embraced the indoctrination of these tools in their daily lives and for some wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without it.

The nay-sayer would present that distributing tech across the business, you lose efficiency that goes with having a centralized enterprise architecture.

Again, we retort… smartphone…  Just because your data needs to be centralized, doesn’t mean technology does... Power should be in the hands of those who need it – centralize when it brings value to the business – not value (ease and convenience) to the technologists.

And the last objection that would be heard by the nay-sayer’s - Breaking down organizational silos sounds like a recipe for organizational chaos. IT functions and teams are delineated for a reason.

The issue of organizational siloes boils down to one question: Should IT remain a collection of function-specific fiefdoms, or should you organize it around processes and outcomes? By focusing on and organizing around outcomes, you are not introducing disorder—you are simply reordering the IT organization so that it can partner more effectively with the business, and maximize the value it brings to the enterprise. This is particularly true with bottom-up investments focusing on standardizing platforms, automation, and delivery.

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Source(s)

• https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/tech-trends.html
• https://www.accenture.com/t20180227T215953Z__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/next-gen-7/tech-vision-2018/pdf/Accenture-TechVision-2018-Tech-Trends-Report.pdf#zoom=50
• http://go.infotech.com/2018-CIO-Trend-Report-G?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=tech%20trends
• https://datafloq.com/read/the-top-7-technology-trends-for-2018/4085

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 23 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085 x502