Third dimension in developing strategy

Strategy is the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal according to Merriam Webster dictionary. In any organizations there are multiple business areas and each business area will have multiple line of businesses, therefore when we are talking about strategy we need to know goals for each line of businesses (LoB) along with that of Information Technology.  Each LoB will establish their own goals based on the market situation, market trend, and most of all how to position themselves at competitive edge. These LoBs goals are also need to align with the overall enterprise’s business goals. The establishing a strategy is a true art of devising or employing plans or stratagems towards the goal of the enterprise and can be accomplished by using a holistic approach. Therefore understanding company’s goal, vision, and mission is an essential step in developing IT strategy that can fulfill overall enterprise’s goal. Most consulting companies have created practices /offerings and developed competency specifically to support their clients in developing a strategy. Each firm has their own techniques and method to establish strategy. Most of us consider relationship and alignment of Enterprise Strategy with Enterprise Architecture, but the most critical piece I see missing everywhere, which I call the third dimension, the Technology Outlook or the new technology. We consider where the enterprise is today and where they want to go. Based on target architecture we design a blue print and road map without considering the third dimension that is technology outlook, new technology that will affect the future business. How do you know how much your today’s architecture decision will affect due to continuous evolution of new technology? The biggest challenge I see:

(1)    Integrating Technology outlook into Strategy development 

(2)    Strategy that will satisfy today’s need and will accommodate tomorrow’s new technology.

(3)    How will you synchronize and integrate Business Architecture, Information Architecture, Technology Architecture,  future technology, and potential new computing model in this innovative dynamic new business world

(4)    How will you deliver strategy while protecting client’s investment and without reworking on any component of the framework that you develop using this strategy.

(5)    SOA implementation strategy that can support future technology.

We need a pattern based approach that can satisfy all these questions and factor-in all five challenges.

For technique paper and approach please contact me. I will be happy to discuss further and will provide you the intellectual capitals that I have created for strategy and road map development.

Technology outlook a paradigm shift

We are in the midst of transformation phase of information technology. Enterprises are shifting their focus on digitizing their enterprise. As the economy goes more and more digital managing the value created by the digital economy becoming more and more challenging.  We see emerging mobile financial services, mobile banking services using non-banking infrastructure like the merger of super telecom technology with banking services. Enterprises are becoming more and more dependable on data, as the data transforming enterprise to smarter decision. Enterprises are digitizing their enterprise to increase service quality as well as increase in revenue growth. Definition of IT transformation has changed to digitizing enterprise. Cloud Computing has transformed the old IT architecture into new paradigm. Near Field Communication (NFC), Unified Threat Management (UTM), next generation firewall, Cloud computing, web services, and Service orientation immensely contributed to this new business process landscape.  This is not new news, but most enterprises are started realizing the value of new generation information technology.       

It is very clear that the technology is blending with the business to support dynamic nature of the new economy.  The mobile web is now matured, the rise of social networking, globalization and the availability of global resources as well as the onset of real time data streaming and access to information are changing the traditional datacenter concept. These are all becoming interconnected and the advancements in technology are driving this at a greater speed. One new approach that is helping to address these issues is Cloud computing. We see this trend as one that will greatly change the way people acquire, deploy and manage IT services. 

Therefore the scope of IT Strategy and road map has been extended. The following picture depicts the logical view of the new landscape of enterprise information technology services and delivery model. This highly integrated, flexible, real time interaction, and catalyst for rapid innovation are enabled by architecture design style and cloud computing infrastructure.

Physical consolidation, virtualization of server, storage, network along with right provisioning and workload management technologies can be leveraged to accomplish an optimized and efficient underpinning cloud computing infrastructure. Therefore, augmenting existing strategy and road map may suffice to fulfill the current transformation need. But delivery channel and web component need significant architecture work. That includes social media strategy, collaboration, governance for the new added fabric, and security. For detail approach and how to create a measureable and actionable road map for this transformation please contact me. I will be happy to provide you all relevant artifacts and reference materials that can be used as a framework and reference architecture model.