Gartner: IT modernization needs to be core to IT strategy in 2008 28 February, 2008 By Chris Talbot

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IT grew out of electronic data processing, and over the years, many administration processes have been computerized.

"It's like, enough already. It's not that we've reached the end of the opportunity for IT to do good, because we haven't by a long shot, but if you look at the estates that most CIOs are responsible for. . . there's quite a lot there that's beginning to show its age, and so you've got many, many systems which are likely to reach the end of their natural life over the next, let's say, five to seven years," said Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

While that may sound like plenty of time to replace end-of-life systems, Kyte noted that there are still a lot of applications that have been in use for 25 to 30 years (like in the banking and financial sectors, for instance). They delivered great value, but they're showing their age, he said.

"Business puts the IT organization under a lot of pressure for agile change and response for changing business environments . . . and they need new functionality very quickly," Kyte said. "What most IT organizations are trying to manage is an enormous ragbag of interconnected objects, each one of which was acquired because it fitted a specific need, not because it completed an integrated vision on the IT assets that were needed."

The IT modernization movement is about recognizing many technologies are reaching the end of their useful lives, and that the management processes and entire culture of delivering IT services is also reaching the end of an epoch, Kyte said.

"It's not about getting shiny, new stuff. It really isn't. The reality is that some of the highest value systems in any enterprise are likely to be quite old, and they may well be able to continue to deliver value for quite a long time," Kyte said. In fact, the lowest value systems are often the newest ones because there's no justification for their acquisition or use.

CIOs are stuck dealing with a collection of IT objects that causing headaches. Kyte said that if they don't starting start designing their future architectures and taking charge of their IT portfolios, "this accidental architecture is just going to crush you."

To prepare for the future, CIOs need to put IT modernization at the core of their IT strategies this year, Kyte said. Gartner estimates that by 2010, more than one-third of all application projects will be driven by the need to deal with technology and/or skills obsolescence.

Gartner identified three major contributing factors as to why IT modernization is needed right now. The first reason is the lack of agility of IT systems and services in responding to business requests for change. The second is increasing integration among portfolios. The third is increased obsolescence of deployed assets.

With the baby boomers that have been supporting a lot of the legacy IT out there retiring over the next three to five years (many have already begun to retire), those skill sets will be leaving the workforce, Kyte said. Businesses need to recognize any potential problems now and not wait until the last minute to modernize their IT, he said.

"Once again, you don't want to be doing this in a panic," Kyte said. It's a project that needs to be done in a measured and calculated way -- and not under stress.

Every organization will need to do their own diagnostics on their IT systems and determine which systems will continue to be appropriate a few years down the road and which will need replacing, he said.

"Some businesses will cruise along perfectly happy," Kyte said. Others will be increasingly under pressure from business users and will need to make changes.

Whatever happens, the business world is going to come out on the other side of IT modernization with a very different shape to the industry and a very different set of rule and behaviors in the relationship between IT and business, he said.