I have been successful at delivering a consistent message for the past fifteen years to audiences from the C-suite to middle management, and that is in today’s ever-changing business climate, successful companies are those that create an enterprise that can effectively synchronize business and IT. By matching their company’s evolving business needs to their IT environments, they can strike a balance across managing costs and risks, increasing value and quality, and enhancing business agility.
I wrote a couple of articles many years back about building an agile and flexible enterprise using a set of models, principles, and design rules that address the need to maximize financial return, improve performance, minimize risk, and enhance business agility. I want to revisit the premise of that article and view it through the lens of …
Continue reading “DevOps and the Agile Enterprise Framework”
I’ve been speaking a lot lately about the importance of IT governance, especially as it relates to driving cloud (public, private, hybrid) adoption in the enterprise. Although IT governance is critical to the success of having a flexible and agile enterprise, having an overarching enterprise architecture to show how all the components of the enterprise …
Continue reading “In the Age of Cloud, You Still Need an Enterprise Architecture”
There are many times when I’m on consulting engagements when I ask CIOs, “How much of an understanding do you and your management have about how your company makes money, thereby having a staff that knows where the money comes from and where it goes?” One of the scariest responses that I have had to that …
Continue reading “You Need IT-Business Integration, Not Alignment”
There is an old joke about five frogs who are sitting on a log, and four decide to jump off. However, all five frogs remain on the log after making the decision, because deciding to do something is very different from actually doing it. This joke seems a very appropriate analogy for IT organizational transformation.
I’ve often written about using change and disruption as a competitive weapon in business, but John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, is the epitome of using change and disruption as a way to gain market share and outrun his competition. As stated in previous articles “change presents opportunities”. The ability to adapt to change is a key advantage in business. To survive, compete, and win, enterprises must adapt. However, because change is often disruptive and expensive, few organizations are prepared to take advantage consistently of the opportunities that change presents. This is not the case with Cisco.
Are you heading to VMWorld 2009? If so, you don’t want to miss a great community-based event the night before things kick off on Monday. Please make sure that you RSVP for the event.
