SmartAnalytics

In the earlier posts I have explained how three attributes namely: Impact, Effectiveness and Availability can be used to measure the value of each IT Service for a given Line of Business (LOB). Easy as it might sound, the devil is however in the detail. In real world, for each LOB the unit of measure to perceive the value of IT Service is completely different. For example in a product centric organization the Engineering division looks at IT Services as enablers to help them in timely release management of products. For Sales LOB, IT Services are enablers of sales whether it is online or offline. For the Finance team, IT Services may be all about timely management of quarterly reports and numbers.

Marshall McLuhan‘s enigmatic phrase from the sixties gives him credit for predicting the World Wide Web 30 years ago.  He could have just as well have been talking about Data Visualization for Business Analytics. While information management technology has grown at a blistering pace, the human ability to process and comprehend numerical data has not. Visualization opens up the channel of communication between the technologists who create the data and the business people who act upon it.

In the earlier article, I explained that whether IT is considered as a strategic differentiator or a commodity, organizations need to come up with a consistent framework to measure its value to business on an ongoing basis.

About eight years have gone by since Nicholas Carr famously argued that “IT Doesn’t Matter”, in his often quoted article in Harvard Business Review. Countless rebuttals and affirmations have since been posted all over the cyberspace. Whether IT is a mere commodity or a strategic value to business, what cannot be escaped is a need to empirically measure it.

Data growth curve:  Terabytes -> Petabytes -> Exabytes -> Zettabytes -> Yottabytes -> Brontobytes -> Geopbytes.  It is getting more interesting.