The IT To Business Technology Transformation — Learning From Utilities

Evolving business, political, regulatory, ecological, and financial challenges are accelerating the utility industry's transformation to a new business technology model. As the industry adapts to these pressures and new technologies such as X Internet or Dynamic Business Applications pervade core processes, IT's role within the enterprise also changes. But how are utility IT executives dealing with all these business and technology changes while they also concentrate on conserving cash and freezing or decreasing spending? Utility CIOs told us that they operate with customized service portfolios, which they pull from a broad variety of service providers offering services that range from core business innovation to business process improvements to dial-tone reliability at the same time. Their strategies provide evidence for a more general, cross-industry trend toward splitting of the traditional IT into business demand and more specialized IT supply functions.