New IT-Business Partnership Enables BT Success

With the emergence of business technology (BT), technology is moving outside of IT's direct control. Why? BT users are striving to use technology for their specific purposes at a pace faster than IT's project-based design-build-maintain approach will allow. This isn't another swing of the centralized/decentralized IT pendulum but a fundamental shift in technology management. And as BT users take control, the relationship between IT and the business must change, with roles previously held only by IT now residing within business organizations. As a result, CIOs face a fork in the road — either keep on the traditional IT path of maintaining tight control over technologies and ignore these forces or work more closely with the business to assure BT users' success. The first fork is high risk — left on their own, business users face failure — while the second fork offers opportunities. CIOs' only real choice is the second path — adding a greater dimension of partnership to their work with the business — synchronizing IT's work with the business', architecting a flexible BT platform, and shifting IT's culture to support business' successful efforts.