• Explore More Strategy Topics

  Agile Agility Alignment Architecture Benchmark Business Cost Decision-Making Definition EA Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Archuitecture Execution Framework Good Enough Governance GTD Heuristic IEEE 1457 IT IT Governance ITIL Management Measurement Methodology Performance Planning Planninig Principle Principles Process Project Reference Architecture Research Security Simple Small Wins SOA Social Architecture Software Architecture Solution Standards Strategy Technology Thinking TOGAF Trends Zachman

• Blogroll

  • Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight…
  • Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture
  • Serge Thorn’s IT Blog
  • Smart (Enough) Systems
  • Technology Architecture & Projects
  • The Practice of Leadership
  • Todd Biske: Outside the Box
  • User-Centric Enterprise Architecture

An article from Cio.com title "The Productivity Gap Between Mid-Market and Large IT Shops" really struck a cord with me. The IT service management consulting at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) performed an analysis of recent data trends and found that:

"IT departments in Fortune 1000 enterprises actually are more productive and effective service providers than mid-market counterparts—and it has nothing to do with the amount of staffers or money spent."

Having worked in both large and mid-market IT shops, my experience supports their findings, consider the following results from their research:

• Ninety percent of mid-market IT organizations use manual processes.
• Seven out of 10 calls for IT support are a direct result of incorrect operating procedures, meaning self-inflicted by the IT staff.
• Eight out of 10 IT system outages are caused by a failed change—meaning, an IT staffer "didn’t take the time to consider the ramifications of making a change to the infrastructure,"
• As much as 80 percent of the actual IT department is replicated by "shadow IT" workers in the business because IT is too busy to service their customers effectively.
• Research from EMA and The Standish Group show that approximately 70 percent of mid-market IT projects fail.
• Larger companies of the Fortune 1000 support almost three times—2.9 times, to be precise—as many users per IT staff member than mid-market companies….. The Fortune 1000 user-to-IT-worker ratio is 512 users for every one IT worker; in the mid-market, the ratio is 175-to-1…..this makes "mid-market IT organizations only about one-third as effective as their larger Fortune 1000 cousins.

The reason for the different in large and mid-market organisations is not about the money spent of IT and it’s not about the number of staff. The primary difference is in the productivity of the IT organisation. The reason for the low levels of productivity in mid-market organisations are due to:

1. Lack of specialisation: The research found that mid-market organisations have "more generalist approach with a shared team and few if any specialists…. These teams work harder and have less time to dedicate to any particular technology or specialization".
2. Poor IT processes: "IT is too busy to adopt huge [process-oriented] frameworks like ITIL, Six Sigma, CobiT or formal IT project management," Marquis writes. "But the reason they are so busy is precisely because they have no formal processes…. average IT organization is its own worst customer and responsible for most of the outages to which it finds itself reacting," he writes. "In fact, most of the work going on in the average IT organization is not productive work at all, but rather is re-work."

This research provides some interesting insight into mid-market IT organisations. If you’re working in a mid-market IT organisation investing in robust IT processes and specialisation can significantly increase the productivity of your IT shop.

 

Technorati Tags: Specialisation, Strategy, Research, Process, ITIL, COBIT

A Cutter Associates study of enterprise architectures in buy-side asset-management firms cites six reasons why these firms should adopt a framework and structure for enterprise architecture. The report cites six reasons why these firms should adopt a framework and structure for enterprise architecture:

1. Achieve greater flexibility and capacity for acquisitions, new products and new investment instruments.
2. Reduce IT’s time to market.
3. Adapt better to changes in the vendor landscape, industry trends and regulatory environment.
4. Align IT and business to the same set of priorities.
5. Reduce cost to business and IT.
6. Improve communication within IT and between IT and business people.

Source: Wall Street & Technology

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture, Architecture, Cutter, Research, EA

According to PRNewswire, "Information Security Management will be the most important initiative affecting IT strategy, investment and implementation in business organizations over the next 12-18 months, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ 19th Annual Top Technology Initiatives survey."

The AICPA poll was conducted in late 2007 with ISACA, the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and the Information Technology Alliance (ITA). Respondents identified the top 10 most important technology initiatives for 2008 as follows:

1. Information Security Management
2. IT Governance
3. Business Continuity Management and Disaster Recovery Planning
4. Privacy Management
5. Business Process Improvement, Workflow, and Process Exceptions Alerts
6. Identity and Access Management
7. Conforming to Assurance and Compliance Standards
8. Business Intelligence
9. Mobile and Remote Computing
10. Document, Forms, Content and Knowledge Management

"Recent studies show that investors are willing to pay a premium of up to 20 percent more for shares of enterprises with reputations for good ITgovernance practices; properly governed IT is critical to an organization’s success," said Lynn Lawton, International President of ISACA.

Are you looking into these information technology initiatives?

Technorati Tags: Research, Governance,Security, Survey, DR, BI, Business Intelligence

Infosys have published the results of their Enterprise Architecture Survey 2007 which is always an interesting read.

 

The key findings..

• EA is emerging as a strategic tool at the corporate level, and moving outside the realm of IT
• EA is becoming more professional through the use of standardized, well-defined processes and tools;
• EA Governance, in particular its marketing and communications approach, needs to be improved.

 

The survey also shows that the key expectations from EA are business agility, IT-business alignment and portfolio simplification.

EA has gained acceptance as an important tool for corporate decision making. This is apparent from its role in strategic planning and its reporting lines. It is a key component of IT governance.

As EA recognizes its responsibility for objectives outside IT, business architecture becomes more important. However, application and technical architecture still prevail and continue to be key deliverables.

Marketing and communications is crucial when influencing a large organization; incidentally, this is not exactly the strength of many architects. The lack of a structured multi-channel communication strategy results in a serious awareness gap concerning the architecture vision.

The lack of appropriate metrics also makes it difficult to manage the IT assets of the organization as a portfolio. As most organizations do not penalize non-adherence to architecture, the architect’s task becomes a ‘battle against windmills’.

Our findings indicate that EA teams need to change. They need to strengthen their business level capabilities, build a consistent body of knowledge and the best practices of a mature profession, and improve their skills in influencing the organization.

 

Some of the highlights from the research for was the following findings:

 

EA Objectives and Benefits

The primary objective of enterprise architecture is business agility…

"Agility is the objective of the day – not just for IT, but for the entire organization. The most cited objective of EA is flexibility of business and processes to enable the enterprise to stay competitive."

 

click for larger image  

 

EA Focus Areas

 

"With agility and flexibility being the key objectives of EA, enterprise architects are focusing on service-orientation and integration. Close to 80% of the survey participants listed this area as critical” or “high” in terms of significance."

 

click for larger image  

 

 

EA Deliverables

 

"Even though EA teams are engaged in strategic planning efforts, a key expectation is to govern the enterprise technology landscape. Therefore, Enterprise Technology Standards, Technology Roadmaps and IT Strategy continue to be the three most common deliverables of EA teams."

 

 click for larger image 

 

EA Frameworks and Processes

Infosys analysed the adoption of three types of architecture frameworks:

• Generic Enterprise Architecture Frameworks, such as TOGAF, Zachman, FEAF and DODAF
• Industry frameworks such as eTOM, Acord, SAGA and CIMOSA
• Generic IT management frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT.

We found that framework adoption has increased significantly; with almost 70% using one or the other framework. Architecture frameworks have been adopted by 55% of the respondents’ organizations and almost all leverage industry standards. This is speedy progress compared to the 16% in our last survey.

click for larger image 

 

You can download the comprehensive Infosys 2007 Enterprise Architecture Survey here.

 

Technorati Tags: Research, EA,Enterprise Architecture, Architecture, Infosys, Strategy, 2007

Joe McKendrick wrote an interesting post titled "What the statistics are telling us about SOA" highlighting the numerous surveys and studies around SOA adoption conducted over the last year. Here are the highlights from this year’s studies of SOA:

• 57% of executives expect to see cost reductions as a result of SOA, while 27% cite code reuse and 23% expect to increase business agility. (Saugatuck)
• 50% of new mission-critical operational applications and business processes were designed this year around SOA, a number will jump to more than 80 percent by 2010. (Gartner)
• 40% of companies with SOA spend between 10 and 30 percent of their overall IT budgets on SOA projects. Most have increased their SOA budgets over last year. (IBM)
• 48% of CIOs are planned to open their SOAs “to the cloud” in 2007 — the cloud being “where their current and potential trading partners are.” (McKinsey)
• 37% of companies implementing SOA report seeing positive return on investment from SOA — which, by the way, isn’t too shabby (Nucleus Research)
• 29% of companies with advanced SOA deployments are using SOA governance software, compared of 17% of companies still in earlier stages of SOA. (Aberdeen)
• 61% of advanced SOA deployers saw a reduction in the number of software defects discovered in production, compared to 18% of non-deploying companies could say they were able to reduce defects. (Aberdeen)
• 49% of developers working with SOA say they can now complete a typical SOA project within three months – more than twice as many as a year ago. Plus, more than 60% of all SOA projects are now developed and deployed within just six months. (Evans Data)
• 75% of mainframe users said they want to modernize their systems. But 52%, also said they had concerns about their system’s ability to actually support SOA. (Software AG)
• 25% of mainframe companies have SOA efforts now in progress, and another one-third are planning or considering SOA. At least half say they are or will employ mainframes in a central role in SOA. (Unisphere Research/SHARE)
• 55% of executives view SOA as “the best way to support the use of social networking and Web 2.0 development techniques in their IT infrastructure.” (BEA)
• 56% of executives at companies deploying SOA admit that at least half of the code or artifacts developed under their roofs are not reviewed for compliance before moving into production. (SOA Forum)
• 15% of small companies (with fewer than 100 employees) have SOA efforts underway, compared to 35% of companies with more than 500 employees. (Nucleus Research)
• 12% — that’s the average growth rate of companies with “well-aligned IT-business operations,” versus 4% overall. (BTM Institute)

 

Some interesting reading…

 

Technorati Tags: SOA,Service Orientated Architecture,EA,Architecture,Software,Research

• Search for:

• Welcome

  Welcome to Architecture and Change. You can subscribe to my blog using RSS or you can subscribe by e-mail

• Contact

  
  
  

• Busy Reading...

• Interesting Blog Stats

• Show of Support