Gartner Says A New Generation of Software Is Emerging for IT to Meet the Agility Demands of Business
Gartner Analysts Describe the Methods Necessary to Achieve Agility during Opening Keynote at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., October 18, 2004 — CIOs and IT managers want to become business leaders, but to do so, IT organizations must strive for agility. To meet the demands of business, IT leaders will need a new generation of software to be more agile, according to Gartner, Inc.
Gartner analysts outlined the importance of IT agility in the opening keynote at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here, October 18 through October 22. In the presentation, "Preparing for Software-Driven Business Transformation," Gartner analysts said IT organizations can improve their ability to address business challenges, but the current software structure will not allow this.
"To achieve agility, software must become much more fluid, and it needs to adapt without constant redesign," said Jeff Comport, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Software needs to break away from transaction and rigid dialog steps and become what we might think of as a set of guardrails-rules that cover a playing field for much freer interaction of people systems and events."
Changing the nature of software can improve agility. For this to work, systems need to be broken down into smaller pieces that are easier to change. A key component will be service-oriented architecture (SOA). Gartner outlined how SOA can improve agility.
A company "can take a service from one supplier — in-house or a vendor — and mix it with another coming from somewhere else," Mr. Comport said. "This is very different from just breaking a single software system down into components. Now (a company) won't care if the software is newly created, retrofitted, home grown, or a part of a vendor package."
In many instances, when companies build a business model, the software implementation can move smoothly, however, once the process goes live, it can't be changed.
"In the world of service-oriented architecture, each element in the process or processes becomes a service," said Yvonne Genovese, research vice president at Gartner. "This increases the agility of the software because it's now easier to re-arrange the process or determine who will actually perform each step in the process."
Combining more services will start to create composite applications. With composite applications, applications are no longer bundles of functionality created by a single vendor.
"With this services-based approach, we see IT projects shifting from large multi-year marathons to rapid deployment, gap applications, and reconfiguration of existing systems via the process-based tools," said Gene Phifer, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "This doesn't mean the big picture goes away, but it's more a matter of think big but implement incrementally."
The impact of a new generation of software will not be just on user organizations. Gartner analysts said they expect consolidation of vendors across the areas of software technology, business process, and business strategy related to IT.
"The new market structure may be thought of as something like a feudal model of software industry relations — where large areas will be dominated — but not controlled by a major vendor who sets frameworks, and leads standards," said Howard Dresner, vice president and research fellow at Gartner.
"A few large vendors shape the environment within with other vendors. Large and small vendors can thrive together, and in fact need each other to thrive," Ms. Genovese said. "Sometimes the large vendors will develop complementary and even cooperative behaviors alongside their competitive vendors because ultimately the stability of the entire ecosystem is a necessity for all participants."
The success or failure of business agility really depends not on software or technology, but rather on the caliber of people and on the quality and vision of leaders.
"Companies should concentrate on critical competencies for business agility, such as process modeling, business analysis and information design and management," said Diane Morello, vice president and research director at Gartner. "Those competencies will be substantially different from the IT organization's historical technical orientation.
IT leaders "should be a champion for business agility, and use the pursuit of agility to create a bridge for discussion between the business and IT about where, when and how extensively agility is needed," Ms. Morello said.
While there may be a new world of software on the horizon, this does not mean that IT departments must start from scratch.
"The systems and applications that we have will remain in place for the foreseeable future," Mr. Dresner said. "Anything that IT managers do to make things better, will require adding more software, not replacing it."
About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry's largest and most strategic conference, providing business leaders with an insightful look at the future of IT. For more than 10,000 IT professionals from the world's leading enterprises, Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of their annual planning efforts. For more information about Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2004, please visit www.gartner.com/symposium or call 1-800-778-1997.
About Gartner:
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