Leaders make a few moves more important than their decisions on which investments in technology infrastructure will contribute to future strategic agility. To identify the best practices, the three IT professionals marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One of the conclusions was that when companies describe their capabilities of IT infrastructure services, not the equipment (for example, the provision of fully maintained laptop computer with access to all of the company and the Internet), they do better to put a value on what they buy. Understanding the 70 IT infrastructure services that appear in sequence from the research can help managers determine which investments make sense for which strategic business initiatives. And understanding, it is assumed the initiative on the supply side, internally focused or demand can help managers decide whether to invest in the infrastructure at the business unit or corporate. The authors believe that leading companies make regular, systematic, modular, and target IT infrastructure investments based on overall strategic direction. If other companies can learn how to recognize what the IT infrastructure capabilities required for that kind of initiative, they can have some assurance that the investment they make today will serve as a strategy for the future. "Hide
by Peter Weill, Mani Subramani, Marianne Broadbent Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 11 pages. Publication Date: 01 Oct 2002. Prod. #: SMR092-PDF-ENG
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