Conference summary report

Transcription

1 Thank you for making Symposium/ITxpo 2011 our most inspiring event ever. Your enthusiasm, insights and willingness to share with your peers is why Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world s largest and most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. Transforming IT s relevance in an organization Re-imagining IT our theme for 2011 calls for you and your peers to lead from the front. While there still remains a great deal of economic uncertainty, the explosion of IT and advanced technologies is undeniable. As a result, there is a much-needed focus on customers, employees, consumers, competitors and suppliers. They are all quickly becoming part of the IT ecosystem that will be supported by the IT organization. Given that backdrop, it s critical for leaders like you to rethink or re-imagine IT s relevance within the organization. We hope your experience at Symposium/ITxpo this year gave you a fresh pair of eyes on the issues that matter most from supporting new business models to gaining positive impact from transformative technology initiatives like cloud, social networking, mobility and context-aware computing. To assist you in your reporting efforts, we ve created this special report to provide you with an at-a-glance review of select keynotes, session take-aways and other conference highlights. Share your experience and help shape Symposium/ITxpo 2012 Planning for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 is already underway and your input is critical. If there is something you d like to share with us regarding any aspect of the event an idea or suggestion that may have occurred to you since you completed your evaluation form please simone.hulse@gartner.com. Thank you for your feedback, and we look forward to seeing you again next year at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, November 2012, in the Gold Coast, Australia. Contents Message from the chair 2 Key take-aways 3 Things to watch for challenges and opportunities 4 Conference session highlights Symposium/ITxpo Sponsors 7 Post-event tools and tips 8 1

2 Bard Papegaaij Research Director, Track Manager Message from Bard Papegaaij, Research Director, Track Manager The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) has passed a tipping point. Practitioners are moving beyond enterprise technical and solution architecture. They are dedicating themselves to architecting information and business processes, and are leading the evolution of technologically sophisticated business strategies. That s good news for those of us who ve been re-imagining not only information technology but also EA. In August 2011, Gartner conducted a survey with 360 EA practitioners in North America, EMEA, Latin America and Asia/Pacific. Asked about their current status and their focus for EA during 2011 and 2012, participants stated that their organizations are emphasizing a broader business focus. In fact, more than half of those enterprise architects who were surveyed said that they report into the business rather than the IT organization. These findings underscore what Gartner has been saying for quite some time: The business value of EA can only be achieved when organizations focus on creating one integrated strategy for the enterprise that does not make a false distinction between business and IT. So when we talk about re-imagining EA, what we re talking about is this new emphasis on strategic business problem solving. This trend being born out across organizations was underscored in Michael Harte s keynote interview in which he discussed how enterprise architecture was at the center of Commonwealth Bank s highly successful IT transformation program. Enterprise architects are moving into the business because the business is demanding it. Successful organizations view EA as a mechanism for advancing the business strategy of complex enterprises. For enterprise architects this represents a big shift. It s not just about being a smart technologist anymore; to be successful, enterprise architects and their teams must have a solid understanding of finance, marketing, business processes and other functions of the organization. And just as important, they need to re-imagine the working relationship they have with the broader business community. 2

3 Key take-aways Leverage the potential for innovation Use the EA process to spur and direct innovation by answering questions like these: What new business capabilities are needed? Which business processes must be improved? What parts do technology and process play in creating durable competitive advantage? Where is business performance visibility needed so that you can identify new opportunities and vet new ideas faster? Sharing more information leads to more meaningful outcomes Re-imagining IT to become information-centric means focusing less on storing or compressing data and more on mastering the flow and shareability of information. By shifting from ad hoc data sharing to architected data sharing, enterprises can achieve a network effect for information. Big data Big data can deliver business value by improving the ability to access, analyze and visualize more diverse data sources. In so doing, organizations can generate sharper insights about their business or environment. Dramatic shifts The consumerization of IT, along with the accelerated adoption of cloud computing, has resulted in a profound change in perspective for enterprise architects. Their concerns have shifted from enterprise technical and enterprise solutions architecture to enterprise information and enterprise business architecture. With this has come an increased ability for enterprise architects to contribute to business change and transformation. New implications for information Information is not the byproduct of your processes and systems. Rather it is rapidly becoming the most strategic and valuable asset your organization has and should be treated as such. As a result, studying information and architecting it on a project-by-project basis is dead. Enterprise architects have to look at information on its own, apart from any IT projects, systems or applications. 3

4 Things to watch for challenges and opportunities With macro-economic conditions around the world in tremendous flux, expect organizations to look to their enterprise architects to develop a range of business scenarios to help enterprises adapt to unexpected shocks and disruptions, relative to their environment. What attendees asked about and the answers What s business capability modeling and how can I use it? Integrating EA with business strategy and vision is critical for the success of your business and for demonstrating the value of EA to the business. One vehicle for communicating and uniting EA, IT and business efforts is business capability modeling, which is a technique for representing an organization s business independent of organizational structure, processes, people or domains. You can use business capability modeling to: Illustrate the link between impacted capabilities and desired business outcomes. Improve communication and the quality of decision making across business functions and supporting IT constituencies. Explore scenarios, changes and events based on a business-driven view rather than an IT-focused one. Focus EA and IT teams on what we do as a business and value we provide customers. Uncover and illustrate friction points, overlaps, relationships and interactions between business capabilities (including people, processes, information and insights, and assets). 4

5 Conference session highlights Re-imagining : EA Is Strategic Presenter: Bard Papegaaij, Research Director Bard Papegaaij Research Director Enterprise architects have increasing influence in the development of business strategies. But to be successful at integrating with business strategy and collaborating with business leaders, enterprise architects need to clearly communicate the business value of their contribution. How can they achieve that? By focusing on the value that stakeholders have received rather than on what EA has delivered. In short, EA practitioners need to position and communicate everything they do in business terms. Here s how to get started: Frame every comment (guidance, direction, advice) in terms of business outcomes value and business performance. This means creating a clear line of sight between EA artifacts and practices and business results. Demonstrate business value in terms of outcomes, performance and reduced risk for investments in people, process, information and technology. Position EA in investment terms, including near- and long-term business performance (run, grow and transform the business). 5

6 Blending, IT and Business Strategy into One Strategy Presenter: Brian Burke, Analyst Brian Burke Analyst Many IT strategists plan to achieve the goals of coming fiscal year, missing an opportunity to predict the impact of today s investments upon future years. This is compounded by the belief that IT strategy is about the IT business unit and not about the business at large. In this session, Gartner Analyst Brian Burke explored how EA can help both IT and business strategists develop tighter relationships. Introduced to the discussion was the Gartner Business Value Model, a tool which enterprise architects can use as a basis for understanding where the business is heading by identifying how and what the business is trying to change. With the goal of merging business, EA and IT strategy development, Burke offered attendees these actionable recommendations: Over the short-term (now through the next three months): Understand the priorities of your CEO and ensure that your value proposition matches up. Determine how existing artifacts can be used to address those concerns. Complete the enterprise context. Evaluate the project portfolio against the business strategy and identify candidates for optimization. Define performance measures (leading indicators). Over the long-term (with the next six to twelve months) Refocus EA metrics on the value received Reiterate enterprise context and evaluate the effect of changes. Remix and repeat. 6

7 Thank you to our 2011 Platinum Sponsors Please click here to view ALL sponsors 7

8 Post-event tools and tips Continue learning through Events On Demand and research reports Gartner Events On Demand Visit GartnerEventsOnDemand.com for: Attendee access Free streaming access for up to one year or upgrade to the download option. Share free access with a colleague Click on Register and gain access to 100 free sessions across the portfolio. If you have any questions, please contact eventsondemand@gartner.com. Learn more with relevant research Want to learn more about the topics that interest you most? Turn to the end of each analyst-led presentation for a list of related Gartner research notes. Gartner research is available on demand at gartner.com. Make the case for attending Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 Demonstrate the business value of Gartner Symposium/ITxpo with our online Justification Toolkit metrics and measures that clearly show how your attendance can make a direct contribution to your organization s success. Please visit gartner.com/au/symposium for your customizable template. 8