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A Forrester Consulting
Thought Leadership Paper
Commissioned By IBM
August 2013
AL12387-USEN-00
Structuring IT For
Integrated Systems How IT Will Reorganize For New-
Generation Platforms — And Achieve
Business Responsiveness
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Table Of Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................... 3
Business Pressures Driving New Responsive IT Structures ....................... 4
A Leap In Responsiveness Requires A New IT Organizational Structure.. 5
Welcome To The Future: The Responsive IT Organization .......................... 7
Your Transformation Will Take Years — So You Should Start Now ......... 11
Appendix A: Methodology .............................................................................. 14
Appendix B: Endnotes ..................................................................................... 14
ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING
Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based
consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a
short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester’s Consulting services connect
you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific
business challenges. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.
Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to
change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact
are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective
companies. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com. [1-M321V0]
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Executive Summary
To meet business demands for more solutions faster at
lower costs, IT leaders are transforming their systems,
organizations, people, and processes. Much faster delivery
of solutions is only half of the challenge; systems and
business process integrity must complete the picture. A key
strategy: Adopt systems that pre-integrate servers, storage,
networking hardware, middleware, and data management
software. Why: to eliminate manual spec’ing, installation,
and configuration labor and enable automated deployment
and change management. These “integrated systems”
deliver the greatest benefits when supported by IT
organizations that converge and integrate today’s
stovepiped functions.
In a September 2012 study commissioned by IBM,
Forrester Consulting described how adoption of integrated
systems prompts IT leaders to converge technical roles and
adopt new processes for faster solution delivery (e.g.,
DevOps). In February 2013, IBM commissioned Forrester
Consulting to extend this research to determine the best IT
organization to support integrated systems.
In our interviews, 10 enterprise IT leaders strongly
supported our hypothesis that the ideal IT organization will
encompass six major groups reporting to the CIO.
Previously separate data center operations groups
converge into a single “systems engineering” organization.
An “application platform engineering” group unifies separate
middleware and platform specialists. Distinct business-
focused organizations deliver business and analysis
applications. Cross-cutting teams will manage: 1)
risk/compliance, and 2) strategy, portfolio management, and
user support.
How will enterprises adopt this new IT structure?
Interviewees had more questions than answers to this. All of
them start by adopting integrated systems and reforming
their systems operations and application development
groups. All expect to make even broader organizational
changes over time. The journey from today’s siloed
organizations to responsive IT will easily require five years
to complete.
KEY FINDINGS
Forrester’s study yielded three key findings:
› Integrated systems take out manual configuration
and increase use. Our first study highlighted application
project delays caused by manual configuration of
hardware and middleware. Manual assembly, installation,
and configuration are untenable as applications become
orchestrated collections of APIs to back-office
transactions, code running on devices, and cloud-based
services. Integrated systems, including cloud platforms,
attack this issue through preconfiguration and automated
deployment and updating.
› Business responsiveness with integrity requires six focused service organizations. Responsive IT
organizations have six major teams, far fewer than
today’s typical IT organization. Each team has a narrow
focus on responsiveness within its own domain and
provides services to the other teams. A variety of
“contracts” govern relationships between the teams.
› The new IT organizations will drive both top- and bottom-line benefits. The revenue benefits: 1) faster
business innovation with products and services, including
rapid service iterations to meet changing customer
preferences, and 2) high business service availability
despite constant iterations. The cost benefits: 1) high
service reuse to cut development costs; 2) ability to run
more services on fewer systems; 3) reduction in “keep-
the-lights-on” IT labor; and 4) lowered costs of scaling IT
systems to keep pace with business volumes.
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Business Pressures Driving New Responsive IT Structures
Too often, IT projects today are delivered late and over
budget. A commissioned study by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM found these poor outcomes in about 25% of
large IT projects (see Figure 1).1 A key cause: manual
configuration of hardware and middleware products to
create systems. Manual configuration also causes
downtime after upgrades.
“Customers want more features,
faster, for less money. [To respond,]
we’re pushing integration to the
maximum.”
— Director of IT, healthcare management firm
FIGURE 1
Business To IT: Improve Solution Delivery
1Base: 155 US respondents
2Base: 119 respondents whose project deployed behind schedule (Multiple choices allowed; percentages don’t total to 100%)
3Base: 119 respondents whose project deployed behind schedule (Multiple choices allowed; percentages don’t total to 100%)
4Base: 279 respondents who experienced application downtime
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, December, 2011
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A Leap In Responsiveness Requires A New IT Organizational Structure
Our hypothesis: Business responsiveness requires not only
new systems such as integrated systems and cloud
platforms, new delivery methods such as Agile, and new
technology such as mobile applications. Responsiveness
requires new IT organizations. Today, most enterprise IT
groups organize to control costs and ensure data integrity;
the new organizations will organize for responsiveness (see
Figure 2). Integrated systems are the foundation enabling IT
to overcome four barriers.
“We need tight coupling between how
apps are built and how business
prioritizes features.”
— IT leader, specialty publisher
FIGURE 2
The Four Highest Barriers To Responsive IT
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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IT IS ALREADY ADOPTING INTEGRATED SYSTEMS
Many organizations have begun to move to integrated
systems to replace their stovepiped collections of servers,
storage, and middleware — either in new on-premises
products or in cloud services (see Figure 3). The resulting
standardization and preconfiguration of hardware
infrastructures and middleware eliminates the need for
manual assembly and configuration by specialists, as well
as more intensive and flexible use of systems.
NEW ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE NEEDED TO MAKE THE TRANSFORMATION
New integrated systems won’t magically make IT
responsive to the business. IT organizations and practices
that take advantage of the new, more flexible infrastructures
will. Enterprises adopting integrated systems tell us they’ve
begun a journey to a new IT organizational structure that is
in tune with their newfound infrastructure flexibility (see
Figure 4).
FIGURE 3
Integrated Systems Preconfigure, Standardize, Automate
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM, April 2013
FIGURE 4
The IT Organization Of The Future
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM, April 2013
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Welcome To The Future: The Responsive IT Organization
Business responsiveness requires new levels of
communication and understanding, coordination of
activities, and speed of both application delivery and
gathering of customer feedback. In these organizations, six
IT groups are structured as service providers focused on
business innovation within their domains on business
schedules (see Figure 5). Each team both builds services
and brokers access to external services. Integrated systems
provide the foundation.
“The solution is connecting all of the
pieces without a lot of handoffs.”
— Systems engineering leader, integrated financial services
firm
FIGURE 5
Chart Of Responsibilities In The New IT Organization
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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APPLICATION DELIVERY TEAMS REFLECT MAJOR BUSINESS DOMAINS — AND TWO TYPES OF APPS
Within the new IT organization, application delivery groups
have both technical talents and business knowledge.
Business applications teams and data analytics teams are
distinct to recognize that reality in the solutions they deliver.2
Each delivery organization also includes a business architect
to both provide strategic advice on technology to business
leaders and to orchestrate and guide service providers on
issues like future capacity needs (see Figure 6).
FIGURE 6
App Delivery Organized By Domain And Type
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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CONTRACTS GOVERN SERVICE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE TEAMS
Each of the six major groups is also a consumer of services.
Services are standardized and governed by contracts,
which take various forms. Figure 7 shows the major
contracts between teams — contracts govern types of
services (or results) provided, service-level commitments,
and planning-architectural guidance such as portfolio plans
and security-design conventions (see Figure 7).
FIGURE 7
Organizational Foundations: Service Providers And Contracts
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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IT ROLES CONVERGE AS LOW-LEVEL SKILLS LOSE VALUE . . .
Responsive IT organizations need professionals with broad
skills more than narrow technical specialists. Integrated
systems eliminate the need for component configuration,
replacing it with systems configuration. DevOps engineers
join software development teams. The new IT role players
combine separate disciplines while adding new knowledge
(e.g., cloud administration) so they can specialize in design,
architecture, and business innovation (see Figure 8).
. . . AND ALL IT ROLE PLAYERS CLIMB UP THE APPLICATION STACK
In responsive IT organizations, everyone climbs “up the
stack” to get closer to the business. Everyone provides his or
her piece of business solutions when needed, and every IT
pro’s business value is obvious. The new “infrastructure
engineers” create infrastructure patterns and scripts that
developers can use to obtain high availability, security, and
other qualities of service. DBAs move up the stack to offer
data services aggregating many sources. DevOps engineers
can quickly and safely deploy a software module to support a
business innovation into production (see Figure 9).
FIGURE 8
Narrow Technical Roles Combine And Converge
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM, April 2013
FIGURE 9
All IT Roles Move Up The Stack
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM, April 2013
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Your Transformation Will Take Years — So You Should Start Now
In our research for this paper, we found few who argued
against the broad transition in IT organizational structures
we’ve outlined. The debates were about how to make the
set of changes we postulate are necessary for business
responsiveness. Each IT organization will follow its own
path, but all will complete four prerequisites (see Figure 10).
“On our applications, the transition
will take five to 10 years. In our
infrastructure world, we’re moving
much faster.”
— IT Leader, European university
FIGURE 10
The Four Prerequisites for The New IT Organization
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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PLOT YOUR PATH: TOP-DOWN VERSUS BOTTOM-UP
The path your organization takes to a new responsive
structure may be unique. However, we can at this early
stage recognize three major paths for the journey, each of
which has its pros and cons (see Figure 11). We prefer the
top-down migration path, as we believe it is best for driving
the broadest long-term benefits.
EACH ENTERPRISE HAS ITS OWN JOURNEY
Each of the IT leaders on our research panel for this project
described a journey from traditional stovepiped IT to the
organizational structure and key processes we describe. The
most striking aspect of these interviews was the strong
support for our fundamental ideas about how IT will be
organized in an era of integrated systems and continuous
delivery. Our panelists moved quickly from the “what” of the
new organizational structure to the “how” (do we get there?).
Our panel for this project was small in size but
representative of the range of enterprises we see in our
research and advisory work. Included were a European
university, three integrated global financial management
firms, a global consumer brand company, a US state
agency, a global telecommunications firm, a specialty
publisher, an international printing and publishing firm, a
research nonprofit, a European governmental agency, and
a European healthcare firm.
All of our panelists are driving toward responsive IT; several
of our panelists are aggressively pushing big organizational
and technology changes now. One interviewee told us: “We
just let go of [our] VP of [IT] operations because he refused
to adapt to the new model.” In this company, the CEO is
driving a deep transformation including IT.
But most are moving deliberately and trying to help their
current staff evolve into new roles and new organizational
structures. “Transition is happening [for us] in infrastructure
first,” the IT director of the university told us. “Why? It’s
possible to do convergence at reasonable costs using tried
and tested methods. I can’t move operational work away
from development teams across the board. Where I can, I
am edging toward this model.”
In addition to infrastructure consolidation, Agile
development and continuous delivery methods are also
starting points for the transition. “The relationship with the
business is changing,” said an IT leader at an international
telecommunications firm. “Product owners now must be
involved throughout each [development] sprint.”
FIGURE 11
The Three Migration Paths To Converged, Integrated IT
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of IBM, April 2013
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13
Said an IT leader at a global financial services firm: “Our
application development teams focused on reducing time-
to-market. They’re going back to the idea of a ‘solution
team’ including software engineers, business analysts, and
support analysts.”
Those staff include CEOs and senior business leaders who
like the prospect of fast solution delivery but aren’t yet
confident they can control its costs and risks.
IDENTIFY YOUR GOALS: THERE ARE ONLY FOUR BENEFITS THAT MATTER
A multiyear transformation program must achieve big
benefits that businesspeople immediately understand.
Figure 12 shows the four benefits we observed among the
organizations on the path to responsive IT and integrated
systems. These organizations have intermediate goals to
reform their organizations, narrow their technology stacks,
and re-engineer their release, portfolio-management, IT
service-management, and developer support processes.
But they put those smaller goals in the context of the larger
objective of putting IT on a completely different footing
within the business.
FIGURE 12
The Four Business Benefits Of Integrated Systems And The New IT
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April 2013
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Appendix A: Methodology
In this study, Forrester interviewed 10 global enterprise IT executives whose organizations are currently transitioning to
integrated systems to evaluate organizational models for integrated systems and best practices to prepare organizations to
utilize integrated systems. Respondents were offered a financial incentive as a thank you for time spent on the interview. The
study began in February 2013 and was completed in May 2013.
Appendix B: Endnotes
1 Our study gathered data about only one large web or BI project from each respondent. For entire portfolios, the rates of
failure, missed schedules, and blown project budgets are typically much higher.
2 Data analytics teams provide enterprise wide reporting and analysis applications and data warehouses and feeds. Business
applications teams will often build analytics specific to their applications, and not rely on their data analytics colleagues for that functionality. The split between business applications and data analytics teams we advocate is the most controversial aspect of the model. These functions tend to be split today in the largest enterprises, but the split is by no means universal.