IT value isn’t hidden, WE hide it

There is a pretty good article, “How to Tap IT’s Hidden Potential” in the MIT Technology Review. Overall, it doesn’t include anything new to the conversation but try to re-kindle the conversation regarding IT’s place in the organization. Coming from a large organization, it is truly easy to see and almost impossible to see in the agile, start-up world.

It remains the area of the business (typically) where it is all costs, all have-to expenditures, sole focus is to get the key elements in place with the least expense and lowest technology/business risk. And too often not looked at as a potential differentiator against competition nor a way to supplement or work to make the “front-line” technology operations that build products stronger.  The irony of it all is that the value of IT isn’t hidden at all, it is (or the potential) is clearly there.  Organizations choose to hide it with their practices and policies that govern IT at most fundamental of levels.

This whole school of though reminds me of a post I wrote a while back called The Enterprise Outlook is Cloudy.  Not fully on the mark but highly correlated because organizations’ choice to not use the cloud as part of IT strategy is directly tied to the “wall” discussed in the article.  The cloud, while it presents lower costs, it introduces greater risk to that of its “I never got fired for buying” brethren.  But it should be considered in cases a more strategic, moving the business forward option.  It does not, however, match with the way in which IT groups in most cases judge their own success.  This has to change.