MY PERCEPTION OF THE IT LANDSCAPE: A sudden tumultuous paradigm is enveloping all of us in the IT landscape. The words that were important yesteryear; scalability, reliability and redundancy are now considered passé. While technology was an enabler before, has it become a strategic differentiator? Well it is definitely a common statement used in most conversations related to IT. But what’s the reality? Has IT become a strategic differentiator? Is IT being discussed as a part of Business strategy? Is it a boardroom discussion topic? That’s a tough question to answer.
Let us try to explore what IT means in the current game plan of strategy. At a generic level what are the components of strategy? Thought? Time? Direction?
Profile: Mr. Sudarsan Ranganathan founded M/s Veeras Infotek Pvt Ltd. in 1992 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Mr. Ranganathan holds a degree in Mathematics and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from XLRI,Jamshedpur
Speed? Given that thought is a combination of desire, logic, analysis and creativity it does involve multiple components that are exclusive and non-generic. Definitely a unique differentiator. Thought and direction are derivatives of insight. We will leave invention out for that is exclusively the creation from an inspired mind. Insight could lead to innovation, differentiation or an invention. Innovation and differentiation are a result of studied information of the landscape that involve the macro and micro economic factors. Analytics plays a huge role in collating information across your data store to provide you with meaningful patterns along with predictive or prescriptive advisories that shape the future of your organizations strategy.
Time and speed are the essence of execution. Success isn’t about where you reach but in what time you reach. Vision could only lead you to be a niche player even on a Gartner quadrant but your ability to execute will land you at the leadership quadrant. With the advent of virtualisation, cloud, hybrid cloud environments the elasticity and scalability of
organizations IT infrastructure has now become rudimentary. Architecting the data strategy from its form, computational availability, cross functional relationships, collaborative functionality across multifarious devices and users, has been enabled but the objective for such an exercise needs to be justified through the business imperatives. The more the data; the more is the need to secure and provide for trust worthy computing. It is no longer just an information security posture but a Brand protection strategy that we need to cater to.
With most organizations impacted by the conundrum of “Digitize or Die” we should not
hurry into a IT strategy without our long term organization vision into consideration. But with all this happening, is it still a board room strategy discussion or just a function that enables strategy?