IT strategies must be 'flexible'

12:36 26th September 2008

IT directors need to develop IT strategies that help businesses operate flexibly and adapt to changing markets, Gartner has suggested.

The analyst firm warned that traditional architectures used to define IT processes are unable to cope with the dynamic nature of businesses, particularly in the current financial turbulence.

Instead of deciding what IT products to standardise, Gartner has recommended that IT departments focus on defining formats and protocols.

Nick Gall, speaking at the Enterprise Architecture Summit this week, urged delegates to look at real world successes of flexible systems such as Swift, the banking exchange network, and the UK's NHS Connecting for Health programme.

The benefits of these systems are that that they do not specify IT products, just a small number of formats required to comply with a business process.

Earlier this week, an Avocent survey revealed that data centre power management and virtualisation are IT firms' top business alignment priorities.

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