Did you know today is International Panic Day? An enterprise-wide technology failure is one of the biggest causes for panic in the business world behind maintaining profitability. If a company’s IT infrastructure or mission critical application goes down, it affects everyone – including customers.

As you know, Troux recently joined other industry experts in support of the Penn State Center for Enterprise Architecture (EA) program. The fact that Penn State's Center for EA Architecture is receiving industry wide support and recognition is a testament to how the discipline of EA is hitting its stride.

While most celebrate National Repeat Day by doing the things they enjoy over and over, I got to thinking about all the things in life we consistently repeat for lack of information and understanding of what is truly necessary. “Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.” comes to mind as a once widely accepted directive developed by shampoo companies, which has now been  exposed as a damaging daily routine.

In the wake of the recent global financial crisis, a recent Gartner CEO survey¹ cited 68% of chief and senior executives see business conditions as “rather uncertain” for the foreseeable future.  In spite of this uncertain environment, the show must go on. CEOs are increasing their investments in initiatives that target growth, improved profitability and programs that focus on the customer experience (see our blog: How Can CIOs Prepare for the Age of the Customer? ). 

Recently technology entrepreneur, lecturer and author Peter Hinssen delivered a keynote address at our annual worldwide conference. The premise of Mr. Hinssen’s presentation was based on his observation that we are beginning to embark on a new era where digital is just a ‘normality’.   Simply put, we have spent the last 25 years becoming digital and we are now entering an era where digitization and technology are expected to be part of our lives, at-home, at-work and on-the-go.

The term “Black Swan” was coined by University of Oxford, Saïd Business School professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe high-impact events that are rare and unpredictable but in retrospect seem not so improbable. In the world of IT, black swan projects reap catastrophic effects and even result in a complete corporate meltdown. According to Taleb’s colleagues, Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier, “IT projects are now so big, and they touch so many aspects of an organization, that they pose a singular new risk.”1 Flyvbjerg and Budzier go on to state “The CEOs of companies undertaking significant IT projects should be acutely aware of the risks. It will be no surprise if a large, established company fails in the coming years because of an out-of-control IT project. In fact, the data suggest that one or more will.”

At our recent customer conference we took a moment to share the common characteristics we see in our most successful customers.  Since this was so well received by the conference attendees we thought it would be a good idea to share with a wider audience.

With an average tenure of 4.6 years, CIOs are under pressure to bring meaningful change and demonstrate to the board that they are impacting both the top and bottom line. Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM) solutions allow CIOs to manage IT strategically, optimize IT in the context of the business, support goals by driving innovation and turn IT into a competitive advantage. So with all that pressure, why aren't more CIOs saying yes and adopting EPM solutions? To help understand the answer to this question we’ve noted the three most common objections to adopting an EPM solution and tips for how CIOs can overcome these hurdles and gain unprecedented transparency and visibility they need to steer IT in the right direction.

A key ingredient to achieving Business and IT alignment is the development of a common lexicon that all parties can use to describe and manage change.  This sounds like a fairly simple requirement, but in practice it can often prove to be difficult.  Your enterprise has this problem if you hear comments like these:

APM (application portfolio management) identifies which applications an organization needs, which it doesn’t, and helps the organization plan for the safe removal of the redundant applications.  It also helps organizations manage the costs of the remaining portfolio through hardware refreshes, license renegotiation, moves to new platforms or to the cloud, and outsourcing. Done consistently, it assures the application portfolio continues to provide the proper functionality as technology and business needs change.