Thursday, September 13, 2012

What's my IT strategy?

I was asked this question recently about a company's IT strategy. Which bit was actually strategy? This is fairly easy to work out.

1. Take a company's IT strategy.

2. Now remove any and all references to a choice of a specific vendor as these are purchasing decisions e.g. we will use SAP to ...

3. Now remove any and all references to implementation details e.g. we will build a private cloud to ...

4. Now remove any and all references to operational details e.g. we'll improve our SLA's and reporting times to ...

5. Now remove any and all references to tactical choices e.g. we will invest in big data, BYOT (bring your own technology) and open source 

What is left, is the IT strategy. This should give you an idea of where the company is heading and what is governing those purchasing, implementation, operational and tactical choices.