“Mind the gap” is a warning to the IT department to take caution while crossing the gap between the enterprise IT infrastructure and employee and customer IT usage.
There is more than just one gap, for instance:
The gap between legacy IT infrastructure and the cloud. Our elastic enterprise theme is about enterprises that adapt to changing business environments and are built on ICT infrastructure that is elastic, flexible, and adaptable. But it is not just about a gap between companies that embrace cloud and those that do not. It is also about the gap between legacy IT infrastructure and business units, employees and customers that are happily using public cloud services already.
The gap between siloed business units and social media. It takes two to tango in the social enterprise – check out our four scenarios.
The gap between fixed desktops and mobile computing. We wrote about the mobile gap between business and consumer here earlier and explained that “mobile” is much more than the stereotype road warrior with a tablet and smartphone.
The gap between CIO, LOB and CFO. They have conflicting goals. Driven by competitive pressures LOB executives want to get to their destination as quickly as possible. Driven by pressures on the bottom line, the CFO wants to know if the price of the ticket represents a worthwhile investment. Driven by compliance with existing infrastructure investments and external regulations the CIO wants to make sure the mode of transportation is future proof.
And last but not least, the gap between the enterprise IT roadmap and bring your own IT (BYOIT). In our CIO travel guide we talked about the three destinations that are on the CIO itinerary: cloud, social and mobile. There is but one overriding strategy to survive this trip and to get your passengers safely to their destination and that is to be the tour guide not the operator. IT tour operators spend 80% of their budget on keeping the lights on and only 20% on innovative projects. They run the risk that their passengers will bypass them completely and choose the nature trail. IT tour guides spend more than 20% of their budget on exploring new and innovative ways to deliver IT, guiding the itinerary for both older and younger generations.
Are you bridging the gap? Let us know!
