IT industry faces a major crisis

The information technology industry is faced with a major emergency with business needs changing faster than technology can respond, according to technology research firm IDC.

The ability to respond quickly and effectively to the fast-moving market dynamics is becoming critical for enterprises, but IT has historically responded slowly to the market change.

For many organisations, the move to dynamic IT will need to be largely self-funded. Service providers must adapt to the needs of the market, the IDC report 'Hinge Technologies for Dynamic Enterprise' said.

While organisations will see that their IT infrastructure responds faster to the changing business needs and provide better service levels in support of business, they will also focus on continuously driving down IT unit costs.

For a dynamic IT environment, IDC has outlined six design principles that underpin the next generation of enterprise systems.

The research firm said next generation enterprise systems must have service-oriented architecture that enables greater levels of flexibility, optimisation and control. It should have a virtualised resource model that minimises disruptions by providing flexible access to IT resources through a logically defined interface.

The dynamic IT enterprise should have flexible sourcing models which ensure that organisations may source IT capabilities appropriately using outsourcing, insourcing or offshoring, the report said.

The dynamic IT environment must enable access to all relevant information and real time interaction among systems and sources. Today's business environment requires near instantaneous and ad-hoc activities among multi parties.

A key trend is to implement tools that can link, monitor and manage the entire value chain and all operational elements that support a business activity from hardware and system software to business applications, data, workflow and business process.

While selecting suppliers, the organisations must ensure the suppliers and their offerings have flexible operating cost model, flexible internal and external sourcing model and service-oriented architecture, it said.