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The Evolving Role of IT: From Support Function to Strategic Partner
As organizations increase reliance on technology to achieve their objectives, IT functions have matured from a back-office, no need to look under the hood function, into strategic influence and delivery partners.
Historical IT departments primarily maintain infrastructure, ensure system uptime, and support users in reactive ways. They are expected to deliver technological needs and resolve issues based on Service Level Agreements (SLA). These IT team members are primarily viewed as technicians or service providers who generally work to ensure the lights stay on. Modern IT departments have transformed from a support-only role into a partner at the organization leadership table and a voice driving innovation to deliver organizational strategy.
An Evolution
The IT transformation toward modern operations and delivery occurred through better business objective alignment, introducing innovative technologies that provide faster ROI, improving overall IT efficiencies, supporting agility as an outgrowth of AGILE IT frameworks, and applying data analytics internally and externally. These evolutionary milestones supported IT’s growing voice and enhanced ownership of budgets, planning, and a lets try it approach ultimately leading to modern E2E IT.
E2E IT Equals Enterprise Efficiency
Historic IT environments combined disparate systems, applications, and other single-function technologies. This individual, one Lego at a time approach, breeds complexity and inefficiency when compared to more modern full-stack solutions, such as those offered by Cisco. The more holistic approach of End-to-End IT (E2E IT) creates entire technology ecosystems by combining multiple elements into a single cohesive system.
In today’s “speed of AI” evolving business landscape, organizations are benefitting from the value that comprehensive, integrated IT solutions deliver for enterprise efficiency and productivity. E2E IT has become strategic as an approach to accomplish hardware, software, and services integrations that create scalable and streamlined technology infrastructures while maintaining required security standards. Modern cohesive E2E systems also support organization agility and drive value through ease of integration and management which gives IT more time to contribute not just do. Freeing time from the fix it now, meet the SLA, you are here to keep the lights on antiquated thinking allows IT to spend more time at the strategy table.
Beyond Modern IT, a Look into IT’s Strategic Future
IT’s strategic role continues to evolve in multiple ways and across interesting technologies. Two of the more interesting technology concepts are Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) and No Operations (NoOps). Either or both of these could further transform IT’s seat at the table by introducing new ways to deliver value and speed organization innovation.
AIOps applies machine learning and data analytics for IT Operations automation and optimization. The foundations of AI systems, collecting and analyzing large volumes of data, fit well into the monitoring and management data streams that drive modern E2E IT. AIOps is designed to help IT proactively identify issues then fix them before the organization suffers an outage. AIOps will also apply predictive analytics to prevent as well as automate routine tasks. These levels of automation further free time for IT to contribute in new and innovative ways.
NoOps envisions the future as fully automated IT operations with no human intervention, or perhaps very little. Work and deliverables like infrastructure provisioning and configuration, or software deployment and monitoring to ensure optimum efficiencies as well as lowest costs can be done by AI self-managing systems. Just imagine your future IT engineer telling her watch to create a temporary research server, set security permission so that only you and the IT admin can access the system, copy the customer database for your business segment with only 18 months of data, and delete all if it in seven days. Then imagine her walking away to do the next higher-value IT task.
The Critical Element for More Strategic IT
The evolution from historical IT to a NoOps future requires strategic IT Leadership. TFuture IT leaders go beyond examining the marketplace to find new tools or technologies, they challenge the organization’s concepts of IT delivery and fit. Without these IT leaders at the strategy table, organizations may stumble toward E2E IT or fumble their way into a single use AIOps business case, but they will struggle to see or act on a cohesive approach to technology goodness. No matter how good technology might be, or how much your organization could benefit from it, ensuring the right IT leaders are at the table is step one on your path gain from IT’s strategic future.
* Creator’s note, Claude AI provided background and historical context for this document. The words written here are my own.
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AUTHOR BIO
Dr. Mike Lewis serves as Chief Information Officer, EVP of Informatics, Security & Technology for Trillium Health Resources, a managed-care organization serving more than 350,000 members in North Carolina. He earned his Doctor of Management degree from George Fox University and is a former MBA adjunct professor at Maryhurst University. Mike has worked in the IT field for more than 25 years with stints at IBM, Merisel, and Dell.
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