Published on the 29/01/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Technological change is accelerating as are business demands on IT – so how well are IT professionals placed to respond? According to some commentators there’s a “dangerous disconnect” brewing…
To remain relevant IT practitioners working at technology’s coal face need to adopt new skillsets and work closely with the business to make better strategic decisions with relation to technology deployments.
Software company SolarWinds surveyed hands-on technology professionals at the end of 2013 and found that 70 percent are only provided with the opportunity to collaborate on critical business decisions rarely or occasionally.
According to the company’s self-described “head geek”, Patrick Hubbard, this points to a “dangerous disconnect” brewing between IT and the business.
SolarWinds’ poll of 873 IT practitioners in the US, UK, Germany, Australia (109 people) and Brazil found that most IT professionals felt confident about providing strategic business advice, but reported that too often they were only called on when disaster strikes. They did however acknowledge that they felt they still needed more training particularly in cloud computing, information security and business analytics in order to help their employers compete more effectively and 44 percent said they would like to better understand the business they operate within.
The need to take on a more strategic role isn’t just confined to the coal face. Another survey published this week by IT solutions and managed service provider Logicalis revealed a belief among CIOs that line of business managers would gain more power over technology decision making as technology became increasingly consumerised and cloud based services become more widespread. CIOs that failed to take on more strategic roles risked being pushed aside in the decision making process according to Logicalis.
The Logicalis survey also revealed a disconnect between CIO ambition and reality.
Although 73 percent of CIOs reported that they wanted to spend at least half of their time on strategic activities, in reality more than half of them report spending at least 70 percent of their time on day to day management of technology and four out of five report spending the majority of time on what was described as “low value, non-strategic activity.”
