The history of IT is full of innovative and impressive technologies. In the 1960s, computers like the mainframe revolutionized the way companies used their IT. In the 1980s, word processors and automated PCs started doing office tasks and spreadsheets yielded new insights into best business practices.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Internet and mobility triggered a chain of changes that placed the IT department at the center of the enterprise. Powerful and efficient corporate systems started to become necessary.
But these developments have become obsolete compared to the major shift that IT organizations today have brought. The introduction of iPads and iPhones, social media, big data and cloud computing have triggered profound changes that exceed the impact of each of these devices or systems alone.
The impact of these technologies is redefining the way organizations and people interact. It is also revolutionizing how companies master data, information and knowledge and how to put it into practice. The IT department is undergoing a remarkable transformation.
IT organizations are adapting and will evolve like never before. Over the next few years, the role of IT will change as IT consumption advances and cloud computing offers more powerful ways to manage everything from infrastructure to business applications.
What is the organization of the future of IT?
What can managers and other senior IT executives do to prepare for fundamentally different roles? And what does it take to reach the promised land of a more strategic IT future department? There are no easy answers, but one thing is perfectly clear: talking about innovation, agility and flexibility is not going to get the job done.
CIOs must have a deeper and more intrinsic understanding of how to navigate this brave new world. It is a place where information technology is in everything and everyone all the time.
Is your data protected in the cloud?
“Reinventing the wheel…”
Over the past half century, computers have become infinitely more powerful, software has advanced and mobile devices have put information in front of customers and employees, which has provided them with powerful tools.
The huge popularity of smartphones, tablets and other mobile hardware and software has taken control of IT.
What’s more, many of the IT systems of the past are too expensive and too heavy for today’s business environment.
These systems are being forced to adopt completely different models and play a different role as the fundamental model for changes in the future of IT.
What this means for IT strategies, approaches and technologies that have worked well in the past must often be thrown into the digital waste.
Today’s company requires different leadership skills, openness to new ideas and innovation, and an ability to connect to IT from different points and in radically different ways. It also requires new methods of governance.
The task is not simply to align IT with the business, it is to drive data integration and sharing across the enterprise.
Mobility is at the heart of this trend. “People are waiting to perform tasks on their mobile devices. Furthermore, the price for not delivering a good user experience is extraordinarily high.
The rise of social media has tilted the power structure clearly for the consumer.
Within this environment, agility is the sun around which all planets revolve. IT organizations must eliminate barriers to scale and find ways to build an infrastructure that can adapt and evolve quickly.
In addition, ways must be found to connect legacy systems – including mainframes, storage systems and databases – into an infrastructure stack that can provide the necessary elasticity for tablet and smartphone applications, social media analytics, services location-based, and an array of other tools and features.
Consequently, an increasing number of organizations are looking to migrate to new IT skill sets.
In most cases, outsourcing company infrastructure services to a company that specializes in IT is being the best option.
A new organization for the future of IT
Specialized IT companies see the 2020 IT organization as having little resemblance to today’s environment. Powerful and easy-to-acquire tools and technologies will usher in an era of self-sufficient business.
Technology-savvy managers will increasingly control and provision their own services and solutions. The IT departments, as a result, will typically be smaller, leaner and more strategic.
