| It may not be readily apparent, but IT is undergoing what may be its
most significant revolution ever—a revolution driven by rapidly
emerging new business models, the power of the customer, global
operations, and radical new technologies at the edge of the Net. And
this revolution is having as much impact on how technology gets
managed as it does on what happens inside the datacenter.
Envision IT as an iceberg, the bulk of which is below the waterline.
Below the IT waterline are commodity technologies like the wire in the
wall, the network protocols, the servers, and storage—and even applications
like the general ledger, payroll, and personnel. Above the IT
waterline are those technologies that deliver competitive advantage.
And when they achieve this stabilization, IT shops can focus on investments
that drive competitive advantage—like cross-channel integration
and optimization or demand-driven supply chain operations.
What does the Sarbanes-Oxley era have to do with this stabilization?
IT begins to be focused on speed, span of activities beyond traditional
regulatory boundaries, and the stabilization of technology
management.
Those of us in IT caused things to be the way they are today. We
set ourselves up as Queens and Kings of a magical world with heroiclike
efforts by the knights of the roundtable. It was magic, the work
we did. Sure, we needed funding, but we felt we didn’t need to be
accountable. Now all of this is changing.
“Making IT Governance Work in a Sarbanes-Oxley World”
today requires consistency, predictability, and auditability—pushing
more and more of the technology below the IT waterline so that we
can focus where our businesses require us to focus. |
