Health Check

IT Priorities: Nothing Changes

It’s an exciting time to be working in IT, according to Malcolm Faulkner: the cloud is sweeping up applications, the internet is pervasive in its sweep of business, and web 2.0 continues to show new and interesting ways to utilize data. However, IT continues to focus on the very same things: keeping systems running, reducing costs, and creating sound strategy for any implementation:

These are exciting times to be working in IT, so why wouldn’t CIOs want to jump on the bandwagon? But, these aren’t minor activities. The new paradigms are significant strategic undertakings. Not done right, organizations could face some significant business disruption and unplanned costs. We’ve seen this over and again with IT project costs spiraling out of control”¦

So while these new platforms offer great potential in terms of innovation and growth””and plenty of compelling arguments for adopting them””they come hand in hand with several risks: big expenditure, high expectations, and high risk of failure due to the high stakes. How do you mitigate this risk? With a sound strategy and a strong focus on execution.

Faulkner then goes into some specific risks that may occur when trying to take on these new potential innovations. For instance, just moving to the cloud requires an understanding of how to set up access, security, availability, cost and system responses to outside threats. As business execs continue to push harder and harder on IT to add value through business process enablement, the CIO will need to find ways to balance business as usual and revolutionary tools.

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