InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
By Karyl Scott
Corporate IT departments have more platforms, databases, applications, and development
environments to manage than ever before. The advent of the Web, n-tier architectures, and
distributed computing has caused the proliferation of new types of applications that live on all
manner of clients and servers.
There's also a greater variety of technical expertise on the staffs of large IT shops than any
previous generations of technology worker--ranging from folks who specialize in
message-queuing technology used in transactional environments to those who spend their days
looking for the most cost-effective telecommunications links for their company's traffic, to
name just a few esoteric specialties. All these experts must be managed in a way that lets IT
drive and respond to rapidly changing business requirements.
A growing number of software vendors and service providers are getting rich selling "simplicity"
to corporate IT departments. These companies astutely realize that CIOs and other managers
need tools to help them mitigate against the onslaught of complex systems. The ERP consultants
and other outsourcers that have sprung up in the past several years all offer to remove the
complexity of launching new systems from the shoulders of the beleaguered IT manager.
Cambridge Technology Partners, for instance, sells "fixed-rate, fixed-time" implementation
services. Apparently, being able to deliver what they say they will is resonating with
customers--CTP is doing a land-office business in the ERP space. Another consulting firm,
Scient, is focusing on emerging technologies, helping businesses make sense of knowledge
management, Web transactions, and the notion of any-to-any computing--the means by which any
computing device can communicate with any other, be it a handheld device, a PC, or an embedded
system. It's unlikely even a very large IT department could afford experts in all these areas, and
these consulting services are taking advantage of companies' need to stay abreast of these
emerging trends. Alta Software in Reston, Va., is applying its expertise in the area of
large-scale, object-oriented systems to help firms such as AT&T and Cisco Systems implement
extremely complex transactional systems for the Web. You'd think tech-savvy firms like AT&T
and Cisco could handle the job on their own, but apparently they're feeling the pressure of
complexity overload as well.
There's a big push going on within IT departments to integrate applications and their underlying
systems in order to realize the benefits of supply-chain technology, E-business, and knowledge
management. In the past, each integration effort required custom coding on the part of corporate
developers to link one system to another. Now, there's a virtual avalanche of middleware vendors
offering packaged software that eliminates much of the coding effort. Middleware vendors, too,
are selling simplicity.
Vitria Technology is selling a product that eliminates coding entirely; it's geared toward
business analysts rather than programmers. Vitria's BusinessWare 2.0 lets companies integrate
packaged and custom applications to automate critical business processes. Similarly, EC Cubed
offers a series of software components for handling E-commerce functions such as business
process definition and work routing, user authentication, and partner collaboration--something
each company has had to write from scratch using C++, Java or other tools. By automating these
functions, which are used over and over again in E-commerce applications, EC Cubed has removed
some of the complexity of building Web-based business systems.
So how can an IT manager put simplicity into practice? If you haven't already, establish a list of
corporate standards that the IT department and business units must adhere to. This can be
anything from picking a de facto database or development environment to selecting a short list
of essential packaged applications that are essential to core business functions. Setting
corporate standards also means reigning in renegade purchases, be it a new tool bought by a
developer or an application server acquired by a business unit. And when a system architect or a
business manager comes to you with a recommendation to buy and implement a new application,
make sure it's essential to established business goals. Also, consider how this new software can
be used in other instances throughout the company. You shouldn't be buying and supporting a point
solution that isn't going to provide lasting benefit to the overall corporation.
These suggestions sound patently obvious to most of us, but you'd be surprised at the number of
instances in which a development project acquires more elements and supporting software than
is actually needed to get the job done. So the next time you set out on a new project, take a few
minutes to ponder the Zen of IT simplicity.
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f you were to ask CIOs or corporate IT managers what their core duties are, I doubt they'd cite managing complexity, but in essence, that's what they do. The IS landscape is an
increasingly complex one that never seems to get any easier to manage. A good deal of the IT
manager's time is spent trying to rein in complexity.
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