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IT and Business unity

Editorial Type: Feature     Date: 01-2015    Views: 2189   







IT offers many advantages to a nascent economic recovery. Ray Smyth, Editor of Network Computing and Business Technology Mentor, explains why I.T. and Business people must unite as one.

Predicting the future is a mug's game: just ask Nostradamus! But the need to understand an organisation's future IT requirements is a real and valid one: an exceptionally complex task which is no way precise. And with a growing range of possibilities, IT provision has moved from a supporting role to that of leading business strategy.

Current Information Technology has radically enhanced the art of the possible. New businesses and even economies are being created in remarkably little time, and with increasing frequency. Add to this the fact that business functions don't always know what they want from IT, and it only increases the propensity for the IT professional to be on the back foot. What is to be done?

SECURITY IN ITS PLACE
As in all things focus is vital, and there will always be distractions. Controversially, the biggest of these distractions is security. Where typically Board level executives and line managers have shown little interest in IT (this is now changing) the publicity of a cyber-breach is ubiquitous, crossing media boundaries and in turn making everyone an expert. IT security is not an optional extra and must be tailored to the organisation it protects, be proportionate (100 per cent protection is unachievable and wastes money and time), effective and accountable. There can be no surprises.

To achieve this, IT security should not be the sole responsibility of a department or function, and as we all know, technology alone will not a secure network make. People must be involved if ownership is to be distributed and co-owned. It is only by engaging everyone involved in the business that the right kind of security culture can be established and security effectiveness increased.

IT security should not be overlooked or under resourced. Nor should it be such an overbearing function that it becomes a distraction. In other words it needs to meet well-defined, tested and understood organisational requirements, and no more. Equally it needs to be maintained in this state and this must be properly planned and resourced: an activity that must never becomes a disproportionate overhead or distraction.

BUDGETS AND PLANNING
Since 2008 the IT budget, like all budgets, has had to take its place in the long list of priorities for recession hit businesses. Each business will approach this differently, but even the smallest must engage with formal budget planning with departmental consultation and buy-in. It’s essential to delivering business-led priorities.

A recent forecast on Worldwide IT spending by Gartner suggests that it is likely to reach $3.8 trillion in 2015. This is a 2.4 per cent increase from 2014, but they cautiously note that this is down from earlier projections of 3.9 per cent. From these figures, three categories of overall spend caught my attention: Devices (5.1 per cent), Enterprise Software (5.5 per cent) and IT Services (2.5 per cent). All of these will have some impact on the network, on security, management and, above all, the organisation and its users. While Gartner rate this as modest growth for some IT organisations, such change can bring with it a lot of risk and overheads.

Returning to security, it is hard to see how it can be put in its place if there are surprises lurking in the wings. This firmly underlines the absolute requirement for the virtuous circle of IT working for and in the organisation, with the organisation involving IT in every business aspect.

TRENDS AND FASHIONS
As one trained in an engineering discipline, I have had to adjust my attitude towards planning to suit prevailing circumstances: it should never be rigid or become a limitation to the organisation. Neither should it be the justification for an IT professional to say no.

For some while now, core IT research has been driving some creative and extremely well aligned business technology solutions. As already mentioned regarding IT Security, the interest and coverage from a wide range of media channels towards some aspects of evolving IT capability has been significant, and in some ways this has trivialised something quite important. The most obvious of these at the moment is the Internet of Things (IoT).



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