The Growing Integration of Business and IT

Over the past few years, business, traditionally a reluctant courtesan of IT, has come to recognize that IT is fundamentally critical to corporate strategy. And much has changed. While many of the basic elements, such as desktop solutions, servers, multi-processors, laptops and so on are still being used, they have been enhanced and augmented by the Cloud, mobile units, social networking and the concomitant growth in availability of reams of data - unstructured data - that is useful to the enterprise. And so the concept of data visualization grew into prominence as a means of capturing and using these vast amounts of data.

Much has changed in the technology, which has led to big changes in the management issues and in the way data can be used for strategic purposes. For example, the availability of unstructured data, properly visualized, can be used to enhance BI and CRM systems, among others, leading to better marketing and strategic decisions.

Deloitte has released an excellent white paper reviewing all these changes, and providing expert direction on the strategic implications. Check it out with this link.