Summer is always a great time to step back, take stock, and recharge both personally and professionally. It is no different for an IT organization.
Following EMC World in Las Vegas and during the recent EMC Forums, I spoke with numerous EMC customers. It is no surprise that we are all looking for ways to help influence our top and bottom line growth—despite our tight budgets and deadlines. This not only means driving simplification and operational excellence throughout IT, but helping our business users reduce cycle times and accelerate opportunities for the company.
While I have encountered many trends over the years, it is the first time in my 30+ year career where these trends—cloud, Big Data analytics, mobility, social media, digital, and security—have converged to truly change the fabric of our business. Over time, these trends will be woven into our foundation and core IT systems, but in the near term, we need to test them, try them, and make sense of them.
So, as I reflect and recharge this summer, here is what I am thinking about:
- How can we embrace and leverage these trends to contemporize IT; optimize end-to-end processes; reduce cycle times; speed go-to-market; and enable a productive office of the future?
- IT is not an island … We need to partner with and listen to our business users to understand their objectives and explore ways we can make them more effective and efficient. Are we in synch with the business?
- Given our tight timelines, are we also relying on our internal partnerships to improve our own approaches and processes? Can our shared services organization, Centers of Excellence, and EMC’s Enterprise Service Group help us accelerate our own objectives?
- Technology is always evolving, so are we aligned and trained to take these IT trends to the business? Are we fostering and using our collective experience and knowledge accordingly?
While I contemplate these questions, many people throughout our organization have already dug deep into and have begun unlocking the potential of these trends. We’re making great strides, but we’ve only just begun. As we move forward, we’ll be sure to share our lessons learned and best practices related to these trends on our EMC IT Blog. However, we’d love to hear from you—how are you recharging IT?
