Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Application service providers (ASPs) are a new application-sourcing option spawned by the convergence of traditional outsourcing and the Internet. ASPs provide a "rent-an-app" service to their customers. The ASP hosts leading software applications and rents them to customers who use the Internet (or other network) to access the applications.

When an Olympic diver steps out onto the 10-meter high platform during a competition, she knows the dive she will execute, its degree of difficulty, and the body movements she needs to accomplish to pull it off. The elapsed time from her leap off the diving platform to entry into the water is only a few seconds.

Through the Olympics project in Australia, there have been many opportunities to learn about project management, deliverables, teams, sourcing, and myriad other issues. The project activities and their outcomes will culminate in approximately one million extra people being accommodated in Sydney every day for nearly three weeks.

As the Internet reshapes the business landscape, companies are racing to deploy customer-and-supplier-driven solutions at every level of the enterprise. As the pace of change quickens, information technology is finding its way into every corner of the enterprise. The IT organization, based on industrial era management structures, is at the center of this dynamic shift.

Writing a review of one of the most significant events in IT history, it is very easy to be glib and beat our breasts. How did we get it so wrong? Why is the stock market still around 11,000 instead of 2,000?