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    Eliminating "Us And Them": Making IT and the Business One
    by Steven Romero
Wednesday
Jan042012

IT Transformation Delusions

I am certain you have heard the countless calls from analysts and experts for the CIO to “transform IT.” There are calls for IT to transform from a source of efficiency and effectives to a driver of business innovation. The proliferation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers prompted calls for IT to transform from a service-provider to a service-broker. The latest calls are a hybrid of the earlier calls – beckoning IT to undertake a “cloud transformation” (though I admit, I am still trying to figure out what that is). I agree with the rational for each of these calls but I fear the characterization will cause many IT organizations and their enterprises to fall short of the desired goals of these “transformations.” I wish the calls were for IT’s evolution.

There is no arguing the need for IT to drive business innovation. I just find it ironic that so many IT organizations must “transform” from their existing perceived (business perception) purpose of being a source of efficiency and effectiveness. It is ironic because IT organizations have always been a source of business innovation. It just so happens that the first innovations IT delivered to the business were improved business efficiency and effectiveness. Initially the business was delighted with these “innovations” but that honeymoon ended decades ago when the cost of IT went beyond the pittance of its beginnings and information technology became more crucial to enterprise success. IT’s system-centric vs. service and business-centric focus coupled with business leaders neglecting to govern IT created a chasm between IT and the business that continues to plague the majority of enterprises today (which is why I wrote a book on the subject). This disconnect cultivates the barriers that impede IT’s ability to influence and contribute to enterprise strategy which in turn fosters the insidious perception that IT is a cost-to-be-controlled. Does this need to change? Certainly! The question is whether this problem will be solved by transforming IT.

The need for IT organizations to act as service-brokers as opposed to service-providers of information technology is equally valid. This is not a new trend at all given many IT organizations have outsourced their data centers for years and almost every enterprise utilizes SaaS. But the onset of varied cloud computing service and delivery models makes this outsourcing a much more complex proposition. Outsourcing information technology now requires “brokering” and managing multiple providers as opposed to striking a deal with a company like EDS and managing a single vendor relationship. Most IT organizations have failed to develop the competencies and mechanisms to cobble together and manage these disparate and varied providers so they are ill-prepared to take on the service-broker role.

Now we have the calls for IT to undertake a “cloud transformation” and these calls will only get louder. The onset of cloud computing offers untold business opportunities and every IT organization should be investigating their path to cloud adoption. The problem is that doing so requires IT to have the service-broker abilities to ensure the appropriate deployment as well as a role in driving business innovation to realize the Cloud’s full potential. I absolutely concur with the calls for cloud adoption and that makes me 3 for 3 when it comes to agreeing with the spirit of these calls for IT transformation. What I don’t agree with is the portrayal of any of these desired states as an IT transformation. I think these changes to the state of IT should be viewed as IT evolution.

Now some folks may accuse of me of terminology nitpicking. They might argue that evolution involves continual transformation. I understand this view and I won’t even use the dictionary to refute it, despite transformation being “a thorough and dramatic change in form or appearance” as opposed to evolution, which is “a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.” Formal definitions aside, I think IT organizations viewing any of these calls as a need to transform will treat the symptoms causing the need for change, as opposed to the disease.

Businesses that view their IT organizations as “sources of efficiency and effectiveness” vs. “drivers of business innovation” are doing so because their IT organizations failed to evolve. When efficiency and effectiveness was no longer considered a business innovation, IT organizations should have managed that perception while simultaneously identifying new sources of information technology-driven business innovation. Instead, most IT organizations ‘devolved’ into the keeper and defender of a quagmire of overly complex, expensive, slow-to-respond systems – losing sight of the businesses they served.

IT organizations lacking the competencies and constructs that would enable them to act as a “service-broker” to their business failed to evolve from their service-provider roots. They obviously ignored, discounted, or underestimated the outsource-provider trend that’s been building for years. This failure means most IT organizations lack the mechanisms to enable effective and sound strategic information technology sourcing in today’s world of cloud computing.

Undertaking a “cloud transformation” doesn’t reduce IT’s evolution failures to an academic or moot discussion. IT organizations blindly undertaking a “cloud transformation” may appease the calls for transformation, but they will run the risk of marginalizing the notion of their entire existence. These cloud transformations may cause the business to mistakenly believe the “I wish it was dead” notion that “IT doesn’t matter.” Many IT organizations will step up to their “service-broker” role, and many businesses will realize tangible results from the low-hanging fruit of the cloud computing tree, but there is no guarantee a cloud-enabled IT will step up AND be recognized by the business as a driver of business innovation and a source of strategic and competitive advantage.

I acknowledge that simply viewing cloud adoption as an evolution won’t necessarily ensure IT’s everlasting strategic role in the business. But shifting the conversation from the “transformation du jour” to IT evolution is key - or more correctly, IT’s failure to evolve. The inability to evolve means IT needs to be fixed, not transformed. This realization will result in IT organizations investigating and understanding what caused them to fail to naturally and efficaciously evolve to any of these desired constructs in the first place.

IT organizations studying their failure to evolve will be right to first recognize their system-centric vs. service-centric ways. They will be well served to investigate how they became disconnected from, or lost sight of, the businesses they supported and enabled. Those actions are obvious, but if these IT organizations want to fully appreciate their failure to evolve, they need to look at the business. More importantly, the business must look at itself.

Long ago, business leaders delegated information technology decisions to their IT counterparts. The enterprise failed to govern IT and in so doing, this delegation was actually an abdication of those now critical and expensive information technology decisions. Business neglect of IT governance provided the foundation for the IT high-priests in their ivory towers and their technologists run amok. Now cloud computing provides an alternative to these disconnected, overly complex, expensive, and slow-to-respond IT organizations. If IT simply “transforms” to the Cloud, it will do nothing to remedy the epidemic of the business failing to govern IT and appropriately participating in information technology decisions. The honeymoon with the first IT organizations lasted about a decade. Given the pace of technology change today, how long do you think the honeymoon with cloud providers will last?

The key is for business leaders and their CIOs to recognize the need for enterprise governance of IT. IT will never “evolve” in a vacuum. The enterprise pursuit of IT governance principles (ensuring: information technology business alignment; information technology value delivery; information technology risk, resource, and performance management) will ensure the business drives the continued and appropriate evolution of their IT organizations.

Enterprises are delusional if they think these again-and-again IT transformations will fix their information technology problems and assure their information technology success. These repeated IT transformations will simply result in painful herky-jerky fits and starts that produce limited short-term results. Instead, business leaders should establish sound enterprise governance of information technology to ensure their essential role in information technology decision-making and the business-fostered evolution of their IT constructs. If anything needs to transform, it’s the business.

~ Steve ~

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Reader Comments (1)

"IT organizations to act as service-brokers as opposed to service-providers" This is a known but unknown fact. Detailed in a better way, a good read -

visit my blog on innovation -

January 5, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterTejasvi

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