InformationModeling.com

Enterprise IT Strategic Alignment, Architecture, Infrastructure and Services

How can we overlay the information, knowledge judgment and wisdom onto the enterprise to both leverage the people and processes, and enable functionality, agility and flexibility in the pursuit of competitive advantage?

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The purpose of InformationModeling.com is to create a demand driven Information Technology (IT) scope, systemic competencies and governance based on enterprise goals and objectives. Henderson & Venkatraman (IBM Systems Journal) suggest, based on extensive research performed at MIT, that different enterprises arrive at the best uses of IT by establishing an IT Strategy and functionally integrating IT with Business Strategy, and strategically fitting an IT Architecture to the IT Strategy. The process and direction of the functional integration and strategic fit are determined by the enterprise determination of the importance of the IT function within the enterprise.

Once IT Strategic Alignment is established, an Enterprise Architecture (Ross, Weill & Robertson, HBS Press) can be forged to leverage and support activities and functions both within the enterprise and between organizations. The Enterprise Architecture would include a highly functional Infrastructure (Weill, Subramani & Broadbent, Sloan Management Review), including database, platform, network, major applications and middleware, to support a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to transform IT within the enterprise.

The IT-enabled business transformation (Venkatraman, Sloan Management Review) will progress past the mere automation of tasks and the sharing of information and resources, to the redesigning of processes, the redesigning of business networks and the redefining of business scope.

The design of the IT environment is as critical to the success of the logical environment as a 3D model is to an architect of a commercial building. If the systems strategy and design is accurate, the enterprise has a much better chance of leveraging IT in a fashion described by Haeckel & Nolan (Harvard Business Review). The ability of executives to exercise the command and control necessary to provide functionality, agility and flexibility is critical to the process of creating competitive advantage. Anything less is like putting a band-aid on cancer.