For years, the rallying cry for the CIO has been to align IT with “The Business.” This presupposes that there is a wall between IT and other functions and processes within an organization. While nearly every business function that lives in its own silo has challenges integrating with other functions, IT has been particularly challenged because of the technology-centric reality of its world.
Technology vendors have long targeted the CIO with messaging that implies an understanding of IT's alignment pain, and they have offered myriad remedies for closing the gap between IT and the underlying business processes that create value. Ironically, the technology with the most promise for bridging the IT-business divide has been right here under our noses, but only a relative handful of visionary organizations have embraced it to drive business value.
So if the technology is here, why haven't the barriers between IT and value-creating business processes crumbled? The answer is simple: technology without process is an empty proposition. The key to bridging the divide between technology delivery and key business processes is to stop viewing them as discrete entities.
Cloud computing presents a fundamental restructuring of the way technology services are delivered. It does not create a bridge between technology and business processes—it goes further by merging technology with process. The Force.com platform by salesforce.com is presented as a cloud computing service that represents this unified paradigm.
Direct access to systems
By taking most of the variables out of the technology equation that have long been the domain of the CIO and the IT organization, Force.com gives those closest to business challenges the power to create their own situational solutions rapidly and effectively.
This does not necessarily diminish the need for IT, as long as IT evolves to meet the challenges of managing the proliferation of cloud computing services. By becoming a service and system management function focused on unlocking business value through governance and integration, IT can reinvent itself and retain its relevance.
The analyst moves higher
When IT is no longer the center of the corporate technology universe and business process owners have direct influence over the systems that enable the creation and optimization of value chains, the role of the business analyst has been elevated to the top of the system design and development hierarchy.
- Cloud computing merges technology with the business processes it supports.
- Business analysts gain direct access to technology systems.
- Domain experts can manage process-focused technology services more effectively.
- IT evolves toward governance, integration, and system management.
Empowering domain experts to manage process-focused technology services is game changing. The central implication is that traditional models of delivering technology services must change when business process owners can directly implement or alter the functionality that supports their work.