Business technology replaces IT
by
Charlie Bess
I was reading a Forrester report titled: My View: IT to BT and found the whole premise of the article a description of what might be wrong with information technology. IT should always have been viewed as business technology. It is a means to an end and should never be an end in itself.
In the article, it states that the job of IT has changed. I find that fascinating. If we were not doing our work for a business purpose -- STOP (early and often).
Like all specialties, IT has had its unique nomenclature and skill-sets, but its reason for existence should have always been to enable the business in meeting its objectives.
Times have changed and everything is faster, but to say that systems "were not used to actively operate the business" is a bit revisionist. We lived in a batch oriented world and that was the "real-time" of its day. Now we just expect our batches to be 1.
For a long time, the Fellows have been talking about the movement away from the Chief Information Officer to the Chief Integration Officer. The integration of process and information flow between and across the enterprise to enable greater flexibility is where all organizations need to be headed.
The one thing stated in the paper that is definitely a fact for the future: "business is technology and technology is business."
As we integrate work-flow and SOA, this will be more true than ever and the current arsenal of 3rd generation languages, hand-crafted solutions and isolated IT plans will definitely come up short.
