MSPs and The New IT

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I am reading The New IT: How Technology Leaders are Enabling Business Strategy in the Digital Age by Jill Dyché. The book provides an action-ready blueprint for strengthening the role of information technology (IT) within the organization. This is a role that’s been weakened in recent years by the onslaught of less-shadowy shadow IT efforts empowered by IT consumerization and driven by increasingly tech-savvy business people leveraging cloud-based IT services for infrastructure, platforms, and software.

To help organizations understand their current IT model, and the mindset that perpetuates it, as well as envision their future IT model and the changes needed to reach it, Dyché described different organizational behavior sets by defining six IT archetypes:

  1. Tactical — Maintains existing applications and legacy systems, essentially responsible for “keeping the lights on.”
  2. Order Taking — Enables technology delivery to various lines of business through formal processes for incoming requests and pipeline management, tracking progress, scheduling delivery, and releasing updates.
  3. Aligning — Supports business objectives of individual business units through technology, often facilitated by formalized business-facing IT roles or embedded IT representatives within business units.
  4. Data Provisioning — Creates processes and systems that streamline the access and deployment of cross-functional data inside and outside the company through robust processes for ingesting and deploying data.
  5. Brokering — Vets and sanctions optimal technology providers both within and outside the company, ensuring best-in-class technology solutions are implemented within an optimal investment allocation.
  6. IT Everywhere — Sheds functional applications into business units and outsources commodity systems and shared infrastructure, dispersing ownership and accountability for IT throughout the organization—and beyond its walls.

The book obviously delves deeper into these IT archetypes, discussing their functions, value measurements, core competencies, risks, typical initiatives, and how each is viewed by executive management. The inside-out perspective of the book, meaning its intended audience is business and IT leaders within the organization, should be of interest to managed service providers (MSPs) since the book’s primary readers are also prospective customers of MSPs, especially the growing number of organizations that view the Brokering or IT Everywhere archetypes as their future IT model.

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM’s PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.