Making IT a Strategic Organization

During periods of an economic downturn, there is increased pressure on business executives to sustain revenue, improve bottom-line results and leverage technology to achieve business growth. What if you could take this pressure and turn it into an opportunity to strategically align Information Technology (IT) operations to support the success of the business? By leveraging industry best practices and standards, such as IT Service Management (ITSM) principles, you can prioritize business requirements and enhance IT’s value and alignment using the following common operational framework:

Customer Success:
– solving complex business issues and deriving greater business value

Reduced Cost:
– streamlining cost models while seeking ways to improve operations

Business Integration:
– driving technology integration into revenue-generating business processes

Business Partnership:
– transparently integrating IT operations into the strategic business plan

Effective Operations:
– delivering value-added services to the business

Download the full white paper at: http://www.oaot.com

The Ongoing Debate - Enterprise Architects

Interesting article that sheds more light on my posts focused on the role of Enterprise Architects. This article is from IT Business Edge...

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/lawson/three-unusual-places-to-find-enterprise-architects/?cs=36356&utm_source=itbe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EEB&nr=EEB

The Onshore Advantage: A Guide to Evaluating IT Outsourcing Options

Over the last decade there has been a significant focus on outsourcing and offshoring critical Information Technology (IT) functions using a variety of outsourcing models and global locations. Business leaders and IT executives now have a myriad of choices available to assist with reducing IT costs, increasing productivity, managing business surges, and shortening timelines to bring products to market. Today, geographic location is more critical than ever to ensure that you meet your organization’s IT strategy, project and corporate goals.

“Previously, clients were willing to deal with substandard work because the labor rate and free rework made it acceptable, but as offshore rates and other costs climb, client tolerance for poor work has dropped dramatically.” -Forrester Research, Inc.

Based on a number of offshoring concerns that have been raised over the last few years, North American-based outsourcing locations have become increasingly popular due to a robust civil infrastructure, access to skilled resources, lower security risk, similar time zone access and comparable business culture. These onshore locations meet a variety of financial and business case objectives without the risk of what is referred to as the “hidden costs” of offshoring. Such costs include the additional investments that typically manifest themselves over the course of time, such as business continuity, disaster recovery and security. For example, your organization’s outsourcing strategy and business case needs to include the impact of rolling services back to internal resources during connectivity and environmental outages.

Download the white paper: " The Onshore Advantage: A Guide to Evaluating IT Outsourcing Options" at http://www.oaot.com