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Bimodal IT is a term that is increasing in prominence. Originally coined by Gartner, bimodal IT refers to a new model where organisations run two modes of IT in parallel: mode 1 is the traditional IT and it is focused on stability and efficiency. Mode 2 is an experimental, business driven and highly agile IT set up.

Why is there a need for bimodal IT? Gartner identified that there is a crucial and building tension in the proliferating demands on IT and prescribed this model to enable the IT function to respond with a combination of safe and established methods, but combined with new and agile IT practices. Internally the IT organisation is facing increasing demands from the business and it has to respond faster than ever before. These demands are usually in response to external factors. Today organisations must react quickly to ever-changing market conditions and in particular digital disruption, which is happening almost everywhere. As a result, organisations need an agile infrastructure because if they don't evolve, they will fail.

Bimodal IT offers organisations the ability to develop new technology, rather than simply modernising or trying to get rid of older technology which is still mission critical, and part of the IT fabric. In the eyes of Gartner, Bimodal IT will ensure the future development of IT, outlining how things must be organised in order to better support business needs. The mode 2 IT organisations, the dev ops and agile developers will look after the emerging and growing needs of business units, delivering fast-to-market applications via the cloud. The mode 1 IT operations team will focus on ensuring the mission critical systems and support the core day-to-day running of the business.

However, setting up two IT organisations won't necessarily resolve the tension, and may in fact exacerbate it. The danger in operating two organisations is that you can create a dysfunctional culture. There will be inevitable crossover so you really need to be careful about how you plan and resource the teams involved in this style of working. My recommendation is that you put in place a process to roll bimodal IT out like any other companywide project. You evaluate what systems you intend to keep intact; you gain a clear understanding of what sits where, and which systems are mission-critical to the organisation. In essence, identify what you will change and what you won't.

At the same time you need to educate around Shadow IT and make sure that the lines of business understand the switch and the advantages of leveraging internal resources, rather than going out and procuring their own. Working to get Shadow IT practices out of the business and into the heart of the IT operation is critical. It must show how IT has become more agile, how it can provision services via the cloud to end users more quickly and how the business can now work more productively and collaboratively with IT.

Ultimately you also need to work with external providers that understand the needs of each side and who can support aspects such as business continuity, SLAs, secure environments and hybrid infrastructures that tie legacy to cloud, while also propelling innovation by providing flexible, cost efficient infrastructures and rapid time-to-market application evolution.

I saw a presentation a few years ago from McKinsey stating that CEOs are so tired of how poorly their IT organisations are performing that they're setting up separate organisations to pursue new opportunities. IT needs to make sure that this happens on their terms. I believe bimodal IT provides a way for IT to produce change at a rate that is fast enough to meet what it is being asked for, but as I've outlined above, bimodal IT needs to be implemented properly. NC