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Mark Raskino, research director |
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Putting Together RTE, BVIT
and EA
Wednesday, 12 March 2003
Three facts summarize much of the thrust of Gartner's research:
Every day, major companies report "unforeseen" circumstances that damage their financial health
Too many costly IT-related initiatives fail to deliver the anticipated business value of improved business performance
Organizations are reaching the limits of unplanned expansion of IT infrastructure.
These facts point to Gartner's respective positions on the real-time enterprise, the business value of IT and enterprise architecture. A concluding presentation at Symposium/ITxpo 2003 in Florence, Italy, brought all three together.
Each theme can be summarized by its own challenge to action:
Enterprises should detect facts earlier and respond faster
Enterprises should stop wasting money on initiatives that fail to deliver value
Enterprises should keep pace with changing business requirements
Gartner analysts reviewed the research behind the themes. Research director Mark Raskino reminded the audience of Gartner's definition of a real-time enterprise: "An RTE competes by using up-to-date information to progressively remove delays in managing and executing business processes." He outlined the 10 fundamental groups of business processes that should be targeted and five groups of relevant technologies. Gartner calls the groups of processes "cyclones" as each should be the focus for a change vortex that sucks waste and inefficiency out of the enterprise.
Tony Murphy, a vice president in Gartner's consulting group, explained that defining the business value of IT requires "measures that demonstrate how IT-related changes and investments contribute over time to improve business performance." There are several steps in bringing IT-related waste under control.
Murphy's simple guide to cutting out IT-related waste starts with the advice that IS managers should admit the problem. Then working on it requires such things as hiring good help, surrendering ownership, asking sobering questions and improving continuously.
Nicholas Blake, a director in Gartner Consulting, explained that "enterprise architecture is the description and design of a portfolio of processes, applications and information and their supporting technologies."
Murphy outlined the elements of Gartner's enterprise architecture framework. At the bottom are the bricks, grouped into domains like applications, data and infrastructure. Above the bricks are patterns, styles and grids. The grid is a logical framework setting out definitions of elements that will need to be discussed and agreed. Styles are the ways data is processed, both manual and computer-assisted, including online transaction processing, analytical and utility processing. Styles include business activities as well as technology. Patterns show logical views of the technology implementations of styles.
Key recommendations from the session were:
Establish programs to cut elapsed times in end-to-end business cycles
Stop adding browser interfaces to systems operating to the established business model
Permanently tie investments in IT to improvements in business performance
Establish the organization, processes, frameworks, methodologies and tools to demonstrate the business value of IT.
Jonathan Green-Armytage
Gartner Staff
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