An important measure of the success of an IT strategy and architecture is its ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
• CIOs are faced with long investment cycles, while technology
lifecycles are only getting shorter. IT needs to be ready for trends
and requirements that are completely unknown when the investments are
made.
• A good part of IT innovation that drives new business opportunities
comes from consumer IT, and CIOs need to be ready to link in. Today
this comprises the 2.0 world: Trends on the horizon include augmented
reality and sensor technology, for example. Analyst company IDC
predicts unstructured data will grow at twice the rate of conventional
data. Already by 2010, unstructured data will make up the majority of
all enterprise data.
• Many businesses are investing in value chain integration, requiring
processes and systems to link to a wide variety of processes and
systems owned by customers, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
IT offers an infinite range of alternatives and unlimited choice in how
to tackle these challenges. Winnowing down a wide range of technology
choices requires discipline. CIOs can demonstrate the required
leadership by turning unlimited choice into a set of directed options.
Choices are not the same as options. Choices, or alternatives,
represent all possibilities. We use the term options in the sense of
financial options, acquired with the express purpose of being exercised
at will. Creating options means taking matters into your own hands. In
a skillful hand, a portfolio of options helps decide what initiatives
to expand, which ones to delay, where to change direction, and what to
expedite. If you have specific options - as opposed to unlimited
choices - you are better prepared for change.
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