Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series exploring Tim O'Reilly's statement that Web 2.0 applications must go "beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences."1

About one-fifth of end-user organizations surveyed have conducted studies in order to estimate cost savings and possible benefits from using on-demand/cloud-based BI and data warehousing solutions, and a clear majority of the results from these studies were found to be favorable.

Within the world of IT vendors, the gap between rhetoric and reality looms large.

As I write this Advisor, my primary computer is at my computer support organization, where it is being analyzed and cleansed of malware and viruses it has accumulated over the last six months or so. As careful as I am, these "gotcha" moments seem to come more and more frequently.

Strategic leadership involves the way you interact with the other members of the executive team, but to be effective, it must also be instilled within the IT organization.

Organizations increasingly rely on relationships with vendors, partners, and service providers to better manage their businesses. Lean economic times help accelerate the outsourcing trend, and the software as a service (SaaS) market is experiencing double-digit growth as businesses seek to avoid costly acquisition costs and financial commitments of supporting a full-system lifecycle. The rapid growth in SaaS, cloud computing, and offshoring continues to move information security risks from inside the enterprise to outside.

The third role type for product management is one that focuses on achieving corporate profitability or business value metrics. It incorporates many of the attributes of the product management roles for marketing and technology, but in a way in which those functions must be integrated in order to maximize business value.

"IT, when used judiciously, is an indispensable asset. At the same time, it can be a forge of distractions and a time sink undermining our productivity."

-- Gabriele Piccoli, Editor