When looking at today's IT, it is driven by some major evolutions. Everything which is done in IT has to take these evolutions into account. One is Social Computing. The second evolution is Mobile Computing. The third evolution is Cloud Computing. All these trends affect IT fundamentally. The consumerization and deperimeterization of IT are logical consequences. Information technology (IT) is available to virtually everyone and virtually everywhere.
When looking at the Future of IT Organizations, Cloud Computing has the biggest impact. With the rise of Cloud Computing, IT managers and Business started to feel that the internal, on-premise IT needs to be able to compete against attractive external offerings. The IT Supply Chain is changing fundamentally. There are far more suppliers within reach. This evolution is neither new nor surprising. It is just that IT overall is moving from manufacturing to industrialization. For IT Organizations that means they either have to adapt to that new age of “industrialized IT” or they will fail.
The Future IT Paradigm by KuppingerCole, a standardized model for building your future IT, provides the guideline for organizations to move their IT Organization and IT Infrastructure to the next level and to make it future-proof. It helps in fulfilling the major business requirements:
- Provide the services that business really needs – agile, just in-time, cost-effective, and in the way business really needs them
- Enforce Information Security and protect the sensitive business information and intellectual property of the organization
- Mitigate your IT risks, stay compliant, and enforce an enterprise-wide Governance approach
Looking at the Future IT Paradigm by KuppingerCole, it becomes obvious that the key of the new IT Organization is the segmentation of IT according to the layers defined in this model. But there is much more. It is also about creating new roles and responsibilities in the IT Organization. It helps IT Organizations in re-gaining leadership and making their on-premise IT production state-of-the-art again. The Future IT Paradigm by KuppingerCole consists of three layers – plus the Governance infrastructure and IT & Security Management.
Business Service Delivery focuses on providing exactly the services business needs, in the way business needs them, and on time. It is all about interfacing Business and IT. This is where Business/IT alignment moves from a buzzword towards reality.
Service & Information Management is what we also could name “Core IT”. This is where services are managed and where IT services are transformed into business services. This is also where IT Security is enforced. And it is the level where Information is managed.
IT Service Production is about producing services and providing them to the business. This layer supports all types of production environments, from on-premise to any type of clouds. These production units have to provide services in a standardized way. Best of all, they are themselves organized according to that three-layered structure, by understanding the output they provide as the business services for their customers, i.e. IT itself.
For a full view on that model, an in-depth description of what it means for the IT Organization and which structure, departments, and skills are required, have a look at the KuppingerCole Report #71,200 The Future of IT Organizations.
This article was originally published in the KuppingerCole Analysts' View Newsletter.