Business agility isn't just a good idea, it's the new normal. And the role of IT is to enable agility. Business happens in real time these days, driven by global e-commerce, social media networks and consumer IT. Companies have to be agile to keep up with what's going on, and that requires developing IT architectures that allow them to respond quickly as situations change.
The whole world is streaming real-time data. It used to just be stock markets that gushed high volumes of real-time data, but now your car, your smartphone and everything in your company-including your website and your CRM system-is spewing data like a firehose. What are we supposed to do with it?
A hundred years ago we saw the introduction of a new process for organizing and performing work (now we're looking for another one). That process employed the most powerful technology of that time - industrial technology - to deliver a significant increase in productivity that made possible the rise of the middle class in what we now call the developed world. That new way of working was called the assembly line. Manufacturing companies in the United States (led by Henry Ford) pioneered the introduction of the assembly line in their factories. Soon companies everywhere were using that new workflow process.
The Business of Technology: The emergence of the Internet and the Web have led to disruptive changes in companies' IT infrastructures. Ready or not, it's happening again. But this time, the changes will be bigger and they will come faster. IT departments will have to be more responsive because, at root, that's what these changes are all about.
