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T
he days where the IT operation was
a separate fiefdom with autonomy
are gone. In most organisations,
there are now components that are relatively
closely aligned with the business and they
are delivering specific business outcomes. IT
operations now tend to be very workload or
business unit specific in their support. The
downside, however, is that different silos
within the organisation have very different
experiences, resulting in inconsistency.
This has led to a certain level of
dissatisfaction within the business, with
those who are not getting their requirements
met resorting to finding their own solutions.
That is really where the Chief Digital Officer
(CDO) concept started to emerge, to ensure
that there is someone to coordinate all of
this and improve the overall performance.
Despite that, most organisations in South
Africa are experiencing some flavour of
that inconsistent outcome and the pressure
in terms of evolving is to now really start
bringing in that level of consistency.
Businesses do not know what they need to
focus on next, or which part of the business
will be able to deliver value more quickly.
They do know, however, that the support
organisations need from the likes of IT
needs to be repositioned so that they can
deliver on-demand. They, therefore need
IT to move away from being tactical and
responsive, and become more agile, with the
right technology, skills and expertise to move
quickly to support the business.
Move away from typical IT behaviour
IT is typically comprised of people who like
to overprepare and then deliver something
appropriate. This no longer works as
organisations need to be more fluid in their
approach. They can no longer take months
to build things out as that will strip them of
their competitive advantage.
Our advice to end-user organisations is
to have the right platform approach so
that they are better positioned for future
evolution. It has a lot to do with the
management of your infrastructure, the
type of data that you gather and how
you interface with the business. It’s about
getting closer alignment with the business,
not just in a conceptual way, but a molecular
way. It is also about keeping in contact,
www.intelligentcio.com
Jon Tullett, Research Manager for IT
Services at International Data Corporation
(IDC) South Africa
making sure that IT is part of projects and
that boundary functions such as security
are understood from the outset rather than
being focused on the later.
Tackling the issue of skills
Ensuring they have the right skills in
place is particularly challenging for South
African organisations. They must have at
least a medium-term view of what their
architectural requirements are going to
be. That is getting very complicated with
cloud and even more so with emerging
technologies such as Machine Learning and
Artificial Intelligence.
“
IT IS TYPICALLY
COMPRISED OF
PEOPLE WHO LIKE
TO OVERPREPARE
AND THEN
DELIVER
SOMETHING
APPROPRIATE.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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