Executive Summary
Why Tension Between Line of Business and IT Will Lead to a New Enterprise Platform
CIOs are rightly concerned about “innovative” pilot projects using new technologies occurring away from, and even hidden from, Enterprise IT. They fear for the security and integrity of the core IT systems and processes on which the enterprise depends. Accordingly, they are actively seeking answers for how to control these new, potentially dangerous activities.
This Trends Quark demonstrates that good practice is to accept that the enterprise needs to be actively innovating through small pilot projects driven by line-of-business managers. By its very nature, innovation cannot be performed within the existing IT operations and governance. Instead, a policy of deliberate isolation, with risk awareness training for those involved, allows small pilot projects to provide vital experience that will assist in identifying good practice, deployment and governance requirements. All extremely necessary factors such as scale and market drivers start to turn pilot projects into scaled-up enterprise mainstream activities. These activities will require alignment and integration with existing Enterprise IT processes, though probably not IT systems.