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Info-Tech Research Group 1Info-Tech Research Group 1
Info-Tech Research Group, Inc. is a global leader in providing IT research and advice.
Info-Tech’s products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with
ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.
Info-Tech Research Group 2Info-Tech Research Group 2
IT departments are failing and may not even realize it. Their failure is not in the daunting task of keeping core services up and running, but in demonstrating an understanding of business needs and requirements. An infrastructure roadmap corrects this problem of perception and clearly communicates how IT enables the business and prepares it for the future.
Business stakeholders look elsewhere for IT services. Is this fair? No – well, maybe. But the business has to be accountable for its previous actions. Being informed by the past enables better decision making in the future. In a rapidly changing technical and business environment it is equally unfair for IT to appear rigid and backward-facing. Stability must be balanced with agility.
Infrastructure must reach out and engage with the stakeholders to logically coordinate activity and timing. More important though is their responsibility to contextualize all activities, past, present, and future, directly linking them to the goals of the business and explicitly demonstrating their value.
An infrastructure roadmap is an essential planning activity and communications tool. A forward-looking roadmap provides the what, why, how, and when of IT plans. No action in infrastructure, from adopting a new technology to refreshing or maintaining a current technology, can be in isolation.
John Annand,
Senior Manager, Infrastructure
Info-Tech Research Group
IT is failing and business stakeholders are looking elsewhere.
Info-Tech Research Group 8Info-Tech Research Group 8
Spend time developing relationships and see pay-off in
improved satisfaction across all IT services
Relationships are 24% stronger
among Innovators than Operators.
Operators score a 71% average in
relationship satisfaction.
Relationships are 22% weaker among
Firefighters than Operators.
Ove
rall
sa
tis
facti
on
wit
h IT
Perceived Value of IT
Firefighters Operators Innovators
Info-Tech Insight
The most successful relationships have a
common vocabulary.
A proper infrastructure roadmap translates IT
activities into the language of business
strategy, goals, and initiatives.
Source: Info-Tech Benchmarking and Diagnostic
Programs; N=21,367
Communication is paramount. You have to put in the work and the time to hear what the business is saying in order to deliver and meet its expectations.
– John Hansknecht, Director of Technology
University of Detroit Jesuit High School & Academy
Info-Tech Research Group 10Info-Tech Research Group 10
Actively manage the perception of competing business and
infrastructure demands
Business has objectives of growth, change, and
continuous improvement. A roadmap will fail to
serve its purpose if not designed for agility.
Stability alone is NOT a sufficient purpose
of IT infrastructure.
IT is increasingly expected to be more responsive
and agile. This increases the need for reliability,
availability, and stability.
Infrastructure managers are fundamentally
responsible for ensuring stability.
Agility Stability
IT leaders are being forced to think more like product
developers: defining the future rather than simply accepting it.
• Technology-enabled business models are emerging in
industries where IT was previously a back-office function.
• Disruptive technologies are emerging from more
directions.
Roadmaps are simple, adaptable, ‘strategic lenses’ through which the evolution of complex systems can be viewed, [and which support] dialogue and communication.
The roadmap is a fulcrum that strikes a balance between expected stability