Setting your 2017 IT strategy...in dual speed

Setting your 2017 IT strategy…in dual speed

January 10, 2017

Less fragile, more agile.

That’s the name of the game for IT organizations in 2017. But expectations for IT go well beyond becoming more agile and adaptable. IT is expected to be an active contributor to the business, the enablers who are always driving toward business outcomes.

In this age of digital disruption, IT leaders use terms like “Dual-Speed IT” to describe the different types of workloads IT must develop and manage to support the business.

Level One of Dual-Speed IT involves a continuous, steady acceleration to support the stability of the organization and operational needs of the core business. This level is internally focused – the traditional enterprise IT that companies like OnX have worked with for many years, designing systems that promote scale and provide availability for their mission critical workloads.

Level Two is “automated and agile IT” – externally facing, rapidly accelerating, ever-changing and unpredictable, cloud-native, and Line of Business (LOB) driven. Level Two initiatives handle web-scale workloads supporting social, mobile, analytics, and cloud applications. These allow businesses to communicate to customers in a personalized way at massive scale and open new channels for revenue and data collection. Significant emphasis is placed on the ability of IT to integrate and support their organization’s digital initiatives.

So how do you set your strategy for working in Dual-Speed IT?

Organizations running successful Dual-Speed IT give precedence to the application over the delivery model. They focus on the application demands first rather than technology and process. Correctly applied Dual-Speed IT delivers the right mix of agility and stability throughout IT services.

For 2017, a well-designed plan for Dual-Speed IT will:

Focus on driving business outcomes first with the proper application of traditional and new IT systems and services.
Create value, increase revenue, manage costs, and mitigate risks.
Be agile and adaptable to the needs of the business.
Change from a custodian of complex, traditional IT to a provider of agile IT and act as a broker of IT services that come from many places.
Provide the proper level of governance, security, compliance, and availability for these workloads.

As I said in a recent staff meeting, “In our industry, the pace of change will never be slower than it is today.” These are exciting times in IT, and we are well positioned to help our clients take advantage of them.

The ball has dropped on 2017. What is your strategy?

Let us help you get started with the free guide 10 Ways to Achieve Your IT Goals and Accelerate Success. It will take you through everything you need to put you in the lead.