Tail that wags the dog….

Many enterprises today have unwieldy IT departments who have a hetrogeneous infrastructure and application landscape accumulated over a period of time.

Of all the large IT departments I have come across so far, two challenges seem paramount and common amongst all.

First – A large percentage of the IT budgets are still spent on “keep the lights on” expenditure with lesser scope than desirable for innovation or transformation related projects.

Second -The disconnect between business priorities and IT spend. Often the IT systems are not really aligned to business priorities and business processes have to be realigned to fit with IT systems.

IT departments in these enterprises are akin to the “tail that wags the dog”.

As the economy goes through the tough times, enterprises will take this problem head on.
So as the dog decides to take control and wag the tail, we will start seeing a significant shift in the way businesses prioritise their IT spends and force IT to get aligned to busienss realities.