Innovating IT: Transforming IT From Cost Crunchers to Growth Drivers

By Lior Arussy

The IT challenge: to reinvent itself IT operations stand at a critical juncture. IT organizations must define their identity, their role, and the contribution they will make to the accelerating pace of technology commoditization.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764583697
• ISBN13: 9780764583698
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.7" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

Scary thought: your competitors read this book and follow it

I was told by my colleagues who read this book before me, that this is a VERY controversial book. Inspiring to some, scary to others. I'm not kidding about "scary". A favorite business associate of mine sent it to several of his company's contacts (me included) as a Christmas gift. Using this book as a corporate gift was a suggestion by one of the very bright people at his company (I say "bright" not just based upon her recommendation to make the book a gift, but because I met her years ago and was impressed). So I read the book right away. This book is the best business gift I have ever received. What you read next is not an explanation of what is in the book. You can read that elsewhere. It's an explanation of why you probably need to read this book right away as opposed to later. If you are a senior executive who job involves creating company growth or making decisions, or if you work in IT, you should know that this book describes the inevitable future of IT. But I must caution you: if you read it, you will not be able to get this vision of IT out of your mind. What's worse, if you believe that your company cannot move towards this vision, you will be stuck with another thought, a frightful one--what if your competitors do? I think I understand why this book would be so controversial. It's because we already know the power that information technology has. It has already significantly transformed many aspects of our lives. We know that accomplishing the vision in Arussy's book IS technologically possible. After all, the implementation involves writing computer programs and putting them to work. But the DESIGN of those programs is the challenge, for that's a HUMAN task. This means that accomplishing this vision, which is the inevitable future of IT, depends much less upon technology that it does upon people. Not upon a few people here and there, but many people throughout our companies, figuring this all out and working together on it. That thought could be a little scary in itself, depending upon how well we're doing generally on working together these days. It could also mean a great opportunity for you and your colleagues. But maybe not an easy one. Figuring out what our businesses really need--what's of critical importance--and designing that is the real challenge. We would have to face the fact that we don't know many aspects of our businesses and our business colleagues well enough to pull it off. At least not yet. Just because Arussy's vision, at this moment, seems impossible doesn't mean that it's not inevitable. In 1980 (before the PC), a restaurant that seated 100 people would have had 2 or 3 wall-mounted pay phones on the wall. Today at most restaurants I've been to, the pay phones are gone. Why? Out of 100 customers, nearly all of them have carried their own telephones into the restaurant with them. If in 1980 someone had told you that pocket phones were going to make pay telephones practically extinct in 20 years,

Wake up call for IT world

This book hits the bulls-eye. IT isn't about bits and bytes, servers and up-time anymore - we need to move on up. These are the real tools to help any company's IT group make a concrete business contribution.