Emerging Trends in Decision Making of It Leaders

IT leadership roles are changing in response to emerging trends in IT architectures. Advances in cloud computing, virtualization, software as a service (SaaS), and mobility have dramatically changed IT management models, and therefore has altered the role of IT managers. Service based computing models such as cloud have shifted the responsibilities of organizational IT managers away from technology implementation and support and towards activities of sourcing and monitoring. Similarly, increased technical abstraction presented by service based models has moved IT architecture decisions into the domain of business managers who are uniquely equipped to shop for IT services that fit their respective business needs. Additionally, technical knowledge has become increasingly diffused throughout organizations, and is no longer dominated by specialized IT departments. As a result the locus of decision making for IT architecture has shifted away from IT and into business. IT's role therefore is undergoing a fundamental shift, with a technical emphasis on connectivity and integration rather than on the design of architectures, systems, and solutions. This paper identifies emerging IT management trends within two (2) sample organizations. While the degree of transformation varies between the organizations, the effect is unmistakable: technology decision making has shifted to the business, and the role of IT leaders has been transformed from solutions builder to service manager. The paper identifies and explores emerging trends in IT management and provides a foundation for survey research across a wider sample of organizations.