Industry

To keep pace with the global economy, many organisations are adopting new business models whether by design or necessity. At the same time, disruptive IT architectures and tools such as “viral” channels of distribution, software as a service (SaaS), internal or external clouds and social media, are transforming business execution and structure.

We are in a unique period of time where many business platforms, or structures of industries, are collapsing and new structures are emerging to take their place. What’s interesting — and fortunate — is that the same thing is happening in parallel and simultaneously in IT. Collaboration and social networks has a profound impact, not only on IT and the structure of a business, but on whole industries.

Every era has its new business models, and previous IT disruptions such as ERP, PCs and online systems, were absolutely important. However, their impact was primarily on the IT platform and architecture side of the model. The impact on the business side developed over time as the IT platform and architectures enabled business transformation. ERP led to global supply chains, for example, and PCs and [Microsoft] Office allowed for a reduction in administration and middle management while also supporting global management of enterprises. The Web allowed for real-time inventory management. Yet these all happened over time.

What’s so unique now is that industries are going through massive changes at a core level. Now, these new company models have emerged on the business side to go along with the massive shifts in IT such as cloud computing and SaaS. The challenge today is for executives to align business and IT components that are both changing independently and yet having a major influence on each other.