Division of Business Requirements and IT Deliverables

Butler Group warns against division of business requirements and IT deliverables

Report recommends deployment of enterprise architecture as ideal solution

London, 4 February 2004 - Butler Group believes there is a growing split within organizations between their business needs and the ability of IT to deliver on these wishes. The solution is to align IT systems with business processes and goals, which requires the adoption of an end-to-end enterprise architecture approach to re-align IT developments with business objectives.
The report makes the following points and recommendations:

• The speed of change required by organizations in today's competitive and customer-focused environment is continually increasing. But the lack of cohesive thought between corporate executives and IT managers is causing organizations to react lethargically to both internal and external events. Butler Group believes that an enterprise architecture approach will provide the common ground necessary for all parties to clearly relate to one another, allowing all company resources to be focused on business objectives.
• Organizations are now required to meet growing regulatory pressures and legislation. These demands will result in IT governance becoming increasingly pervasive, as technology is used to manage IT spending. To meet these legislative requirements the deployment of a service orientated architecture approach will be essential in order to align technology with business goals, risk management and portfolio management.
• Butler Group envisages a change in strategy by existing IT vendors in the marketplace, with the platform providers offering generic services, independent software vendors (ISVs) offering generic and application specific services, and system integrators providing services orchestration. Over the next five years organizations will pay less attention to the technology and technical detail of the platform and will instead focus on issues such as quality of service, cost of delivery, security, flexibility and platform ecosystem.
• Butler Group rates IBM's Middleware solution as the market leader at the moment as it provides a complete range of services required for enterprise architecture, with a number of competing vendors in close pursuit.