New Rules for IT Management
With the opportunities for gaining strategic advantage from information technology rapidly disappearing, many companies will want to take a hard look at how they invest in IT and manage their systems. As a starting point, here are three guidelines for the future:
Spend less. Studies show that the companies with the biggest IT invest- ments rarely post the best financial results. As the commoditization of IT continues, the penalties for wasteful spending will only grow larger. It is getting much harder to achieve a competitive advantage through an IT investment, but it is getting much easier to put your business at a cost disadvantage.
Follow, don’t lead. Moore’s Law guarantees that the longer you wait to make an IT purchase, the more you’ll get for your money. And waiting will decrease your risk of buying something technologically flawed or doomed to rapid obsolescence. In some cases, being on the cutting edge makes sense. But those cases are becoming rarer and rarer as IT capabili- ties become more homogenized.
Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities. It’s unusual for a company
to gain a competitive advantage through the distinctive use of a mature infrastructural technology, but even a brief disruption in the availability of the technology can be devastating. As corporations continue to cede con- trol over their IT applications and networks to vendors and other third par- ties, the threats they face will proliferate. They need to prepare themselves for technical glitches, outages, and security breaches, shifting their atten- tion from opportunities to vulnerabilities.