Aglossa

Does IT matter

Nicholas Carr est peut-être extrême dans ses généralisations. Mais il y a un fond de vérité et le besoin de fiabilité, de sécurité au sens large pour des fonctions basiques, devrait tout à fait être à l'ordre du jour des DSI.

From a practical standpoint, the most important lesson to be learned from earlier infrastructural technologies may be this: When a resource becomes essential to competition but inconsequential to strategy, the risks it creates become more important than the advantages it provides. Think of electricity. Today, no company builds its business strategy around its electricity usage, but even a brief lapse in supply can be devastating (as some California businesses discovered during the energy crisis of 2000). The operational risks associated with IT are many—technical glitches, obsolescence, service outages, unreliable vendors or partners, security breaches, even terrorism—and some have become magnified as companies have moved from tightly controlled, proprietary systems to open, shared ones. Today, an IT disruption can paralyze a company's ability to make its products, deliver its services, and connect with its customers, not to mention foul its reputation. Yet few companies have done a thorough job of identifying and tempering their vulnerabilities. Worrying about what might go wrong may not be as glamorous a job as speculating about the future, but it is a more essential job right now. HBS Working Knowledge: Technology: Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore