15/06-04   -   Pressmeddelande

Dynamic IT – IDC Publishes Blueprint for Averting a Looming IT Crisis

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 15, 2004 – A new report from IDC sees a looming crisis for the information technology market. Although businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on IT for their success, IDC believes most organizations´ IT is not flexible enough to keep up with the pace of business change. This lack of flexibility and responsiveness presents a crisis in the making.

"The ability to respond effectively to market change – to continually establish and re-establish temporary competitive advantage – is becoming the single most critical competence for enterprises," Gens noted. “Dynamic IT is about maximizing IT flexibility and responsiveness, while minimizing cost, so IT can really accelerate – rather than impede – the pace of business innovation."

IDC’s new study, Hinge Technologies for the Dynamic Enterprise, presents a blueprint for how IT suppliers and their customers are reinventing IT – with technologies and approaches that make IT more capable of supporting the accelerating speed of business change.

The study highlights a dozen “hinge" technologies that support Dynamic IT, and outlines six design principles that underpin the next generation of enterprise systems.

An end-to-end view showing how operations are tightly and logically linked to business applications and data is essential.

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) enables greater levels of flexibility, optimization, and control.

Standards-based modular designs allow organizations to streamline costs, increase reuse, and simplify support.

A virtualized resource model minimizes disruptions by providing flexible access to IT resources through a logically defined interface.
Flexible sourcing models ensure that organizations may source IT capabilities appropriately using outsourcing, insourcing, or offshoring.

Flexible operating cost models encourage shifting more of the IT cost base from fixed to variable by taking advantage of flexible, usage-based pricing models offered by IT suppliers.

To build a Dynamic IT capability, an organization´s fundamental IT resources – infrastructure, data, applications, interface, and security – must be transformed into a tightly and logically linked set of "services" that are available to, yet distinct from, one another. IDC also stresses that the assessment of all IT products, services, and suppliers must shift to support these basic principles.

The IDC Executive Insight, Hinge Technologies for the Dynamic Enterprise (IDC #31371), provides an overview of Dynamic IT, including the conceptual building blocks and the "hinge" technologies that support the execution of key business processes as well as deliver greater IT operational efficiency. Detailed descriptions of the 12 hinge technologies also identify the companies actively building products compatible with Dynamic IT.

A complimentary copy of Hinge Technologies for the Dynamic Enterprise is can be downloaded from www.idc.com.

For more information, contact:

Michael Shirer
press@idc.com
508-935-4200

Frank Gens
fgens@idc.com
508-988-7923