EAs Are Seeing The Beginning Of Cloud's Impact On IT

Cloud-based IT deployments are accelerating what Forrester refers to as the IT-to-BT transition: Business leaders have an increased interest in technology to enhance business capabilities, but they are not necessarily relying on internal IT to provide that technology. When the enterprise architects in the Forrester Leadership Boards program met to discuss cloud computing's impact on IT and examine early-stage trends, we learned that enterprises are beginning to enjoy the benefits of the cloud but — as expected — are not necessarily engaging internal architects to provide guidance for when cloud deployments are appropriate. This is not a healthy pattern for EA, IT, or the business. The onus falls on EA to proactively take on an advisory role to guide the enterprise to the right use of cloud resources to enable the best possible enterprise architecture.