Bridging the Business to IT Gap

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Bridging the Business to IT Gap

• Ray Harishankar
• Distinguished Engineer Partner
• Member IBM Academy of Technology
• IBM Global Business Services
• harishan_at_us.ibm.com

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Abstract

• During the last several years, the IT industry
  has focused significant attention on the problem
  known as the "Business/IT Gap". This gap is
  primarily one of semantics, such that business
  people and IT people appear to speak and think in
  entirely different languages. IBM has
  specifically addressed "the Gap" within numerous
  technical forums and studies. These studies have
  typically concluded that, while the company and
  the industry have continued to make significant
  progress, there is still a long way to go. After
  studying this subject, and reflecting on the
  studies themselves, the presenter and his team
  have reached two, possibly controversial,
  conclusions. One conclusion discussed will be
  that there will always be a gap. The other
  conclusion is that there is not just one gap, but
  many. Even though the gap is inevitable, the
  concepts of service orientation when applied at a
  business level may help bridge the gap
  significantly and bring business and IT much
  closer than ever before.

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Topics Covered

• The Landscape
• Characteristics of the Gap
• Service Orientation at the Enterprise Level
• References

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Current industry trends point to growth, need for
agility and broader innovation.

• Growth is back on the CEO agenda
• 8 in 10 view growth as a key focus area
• Companies are concerned that they are not agile
  enough
• 8 in 10 rate rapid response as a high or very
  high priority
• Clients view product service innovation as a
  top priority
• Nearly two-thirds view products/service
  improvement as one of the greatest opportunities
  for revenue growth
• Clients seek company wide transformation with a
  very short time horizon
• About 9 in 10 believe they need to achieve their
  transformation goals in less than 5 years nearly
  half think they need to do so in less than 2 years

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Recently it has become increasingly urgent to
bridge the Business / IT gap. Trends in the use
of IT by business has accelerated the need but
also encouraged solutions.

• Technology has become a key business value
  enabler. Business is very dependent upon IT, with
  some businesses being close to 100 IT (e-Bay,
  Amazon, Schwab, etc.)
• The time to implement basic new processes or
  change existing one is governed by the speed of
  development The closer the business
  representation is to ITs understanding, the
  faster it is.
• Internet connectivity, new channels-to-market and
  now the reduced business cycle time and B2B
  integration have further focused attention on the
  gap.

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As enterprises have expanded their geographic,
product, and channel breadth, business models
have become complex, limiting their flexibility
agility.
The Reality Disjointed operations, product
manufacture, and distribution resulting in
hit-or-miss efforts to serve target clients.
Overlapping capabilities in the product silos
drive an inefficient cost structure.
Mass Retail Segment
Private Banking Segment
Sub-Prime Segment
Mass Affluent Segment
Ultra High Net Worth Segment
Product Specific Delivery
Marketing Sales Distribution
Product Manufacture
Operations
Shared Facilities
Product Silo 1
Product Silo 2
Product Silo 3
Simplify to Succeed - Published in May, 2002,
IBM
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Service orientation has become increasingly
attractive has been adopted, primarily as the
basis for IT systems.

• A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an
  architectural framework and approach that takes
  everyday business applications and breaks them
  down into individual business functions called
  services. An SOA lets you build, deploy and
  integrate these services independent of
  applications and the computing platforms on which
  they run.

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Topics Covered

• The Landscape
• Characteristics of the Gap
• Service Orientation at the Enterprise Level
• References

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There are numerous aspects to this gap

• Business Speak vs. Technology Speak
• Organizational Factors
• Business artifacts Technology artifacts
• Roles responsibilities within business IT
• Culture the social system

1. While we need specialists in business
   technology domains, we also need them to connect,
   communicate understand each other perfectly.

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Transforming business intent into IT systems
solutions that address them is a multilayered a
multi-dimensional problem

• Industry hot spots
• Industry Imperatives
• Business Solution Priorities

• Business Aspect

Business Model

• Functionality expressed as Services
• Map to Business Processes
• Based on industry standards(ACORD, iXRetail,
  eTOM)

Functional Aspect
Service Oriented Architecture
Operational Aspect

• Model Driven Development
• Middleware and Software
• Technology Platforms Frameworks
• Network Hardware

Solutions Realized on an Infrastructure
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A semantic architecture identifies domain
specific business terms from documents
conversations and classifies links them into
meaningful patterns based on pre-defined business
concepts extended by industry-specific and
discipline-specific concepts.
What do we need to bridge this gap?

• A structured view of the business, which both
  expedites its strategic and operational analysis
  and is a familiar representation to IT
  professionals
• A rigorous method to translate this structured
  business view to the evolving, well suited
  information technologies (SOA)
• New build and run time technologies suited to the
  new design and programming model.

Doug McDavid
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Topics Covered

• The Landscape
• Characteristics of the Gap
• Service Orientation at the Enterprise Level
• References

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Existing business models limit the flexibility
agility of enterprises.
Existing business models limit the flexibility
agility of enterprises. They need to deconstruct
themselves and re-construct across the value net.
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Service Oriented Enterprise Primary
Characteristics

• Supports a discrete set of business services
• Has been deconstructed and componentized
• Has discrete self contained components
• Has flexible dynamic business processes
• Has alignment between business IT
• Has SOA as the underpinnings of its IT
• Has governance for IT business services
• Has services provider and/or consumer
  relationships with partners
• Has organized itself to be optimal and efficient

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Service Oriented Enterprise Additional
Characteristics

• Has retrained and retooled its workforce to
  function efficiently as an SOE.
• Has changed its culture or adapted its culture to
  be an SOE
• Has plans and processes in place to match skills
  to services, redefined metrics to measure
  performance, etc.
• Has strategies and plans to drive increased
  business value through service orientation
  dynamic collaboration
• Has adopted standards and best practices at all
  levels of the organization

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Realization of a true service oriented enterprise
requires research and innovation in several areas

• Understanding of collaboration of business
  services to produce new ones with added business
  value
• Understanding and modeling of business contracts
  between services
• Organizational structures, new roles and
  responsibilities
• Business performance monitoring and measurements
• Tools capabilities required to support such an
  environment and organization

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Techniques such as SOMA, which link business
intent with its realization through IT help align
business and IT and bridge the gap.
Business Innovation Optimization Services
Facilitates better decision-making with real-time
business information
Interaction Services
Process Services
Information Services
DevelopmentServices
IT ServiceManagement
Enables collaboration between people, processes
information
Manages diverse data and content in a unified
manner
Orchestrate and automate business processes
Component Business Model
Integrated environment for design and creation of
solution assets
Manage and secure services, applications
resources
Partner Services
Business App Services
Access Services
Services
SOMA
Services
Facilitates interactions with existing
information and application assets
Connect with trading partners
Services
Build on a robust, scaleable, and secure services
environment
Services
Services
Services
Services
Infrastructure Services
Services
Optimizes throughput, availability and performance
Services
Services
Services
SOA Reference Architecture
SOMA Service Oriented Modeling Architecture
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Are we there yet?

• We have made and continue to make progress in
  bridging the gap
• IT continues to become an inextricable part of
  business
• Business Design continues to become more and more
  sophisticated thereby increasing the complexity

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Topics Covered

• The Landscape
• Characteristics of the Gap
• Service Orientation at the Enterprise Level
• References

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References

1. Impact of Services Orientation at the business
   level and its influence on IT - Cherbakov,
   Galambos, Harishankar and Kalyana. IBM Systems
   Journal, Nov 2005.
2. Simplify to Succeed May 2003, IBM
3. The Business-IT Gap A Key Challenge Doug
   McDavid, IBM
4. IBMs Vision of the on demand enterprise
   Michael D. Zisman
5. Towards a Service Oriented Organization
   Richard Veryard, Jan 2004 CBDI.

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www.oasis-open.org
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