Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology

Information technology has made possible the Information Age. Today, organizations are wrestling with the monumentally complex decisions about how to invest in this ever-advancing technology-investment decisions that are shaping the competitive destiny of corporations. How such decisions are made and how they should be made is at the heart of this book. The central theme is linking strategy with a firm's IT portfolio: its total investment in an IT infrastructure. The authors explore four approaches to such infrastructure investment decisions, ranging from none to an enabling view that positions the firm to optimize its IT core competence in a strategically flexible manner. The authors have synthesized the approach market leaders take to leveraging IT. This books reveals how IT creates business value, and how top performing firms use IT in alignment with their current and future needs and goals. The book's concluding section addresses how to manage the IT portfolio for optimum business results. The book includes, among many of its nuggests, a useful grouping of infrastructure services into 8 management clusters. Reading this book is a delightful educational experience; it is also REQUISITE READING for all strategists. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

Information technology has made possible the Information Age. Today, organizations are wrestling with the monumentally complex decisions about how to invest in this ever-advancing technology-investment decisions that are shaping the competitive destiny of corporations. How such decisions are made and how they should be made is at the heart of this book. The central theme is linking strategy with a firm's IT portfolio: its total investment in an IT infrastructure. The authors explore four approaches to such infrastructure investment decisions, ranging from none to an enabling view that positions the firm to optimize its IT core competence in a strategically flexible manner. The authors have synthesized the approach market leaders take to leveraging IT. This books shows how IT creates business value and how top performing firms use IT in alignment with their current and future needs and goals. The book's concluding section addresses how to manage the IT portfolio for optimum business results. The work includes a useful grouping of infrastructure services into 8 management clusters. Reading this book is a delightful educational experience; it is also requisite reading for all strategists.

This is an excellent analysis of the role infrastructure plays in large organizations, be they conglomerate or corporation, multinational or global.The fundamental thesis advanced by the authors is that for the integrated, adaptive corporations of the future, infrastructure has the potential of being a long-term strategic enabler. For such corporations, the scale and longevity of enabling infrastructure requires that infrastructure investments continue to exhibit value way beyond the lifespan of existing strategies.A distinction is made between short-term (current) strategies which are responsive to the immediate competitive environment and longer term strategic intent which drives for realization of a persistent vision of the future. Long-term enabling infrastructure which is expected to survive (and enable) several iterations of current strategy is legitimized by supporting the strategic intent of the corporation.This redraws alignment, breaking alignment of infrastructure investment to current strategy and instead aligning it to strategic intent.We, in Zurich Financial Services Group, are pursuing an aggressive strategy which builds on the concepts found in this text. We are redrawing the line between what is infrastructure and what is local, market-differentiating solution. By commoditizing fundamental components used to build such solutions, which are shifting more and more into infrastructure. Weaving together local solutions becomes much faster, much easier when the focus is entirely on local value-chain optimization.This book is now required reading in ZFSG. We have bought literally hundreds of copies and distributed them amongst our senior IT professionals. Definitely a BUY recommendation.

A very good approach to a complex subject : IT governance and investment. The authors provides you a good framework to analyse it. A must read for CEO and CIO that want to regain control of IT and its relation with corporate strategy. The "portfolio" and "maxim" model are simple but so obviously relevant that you will be amazed you don't have them in your company

Being in the business of marketing and selling IT solutions, I picked up at least a half-dozen key insights that helped me better understand how to position infrastructure investments to be aligned with my customers' business strategies. A dense, but insightful read.