Making Sense of IT Perceptions and Realities

It's clear that IT projects need to be closely aligned with business outcomes in order to succeed. However, the findings of a new survey suggest that sorting out perception and reality can prove challenging. Additionally, while security and compliance issues weigh heavily on organizations, in terms of actually managing IT, they are struggling more with process automation and application performance management, according to the survey of more than 100 IT and other executives conducted by IDG on behalf of Datalink, an IT solutions provider based in Eden Prairie, Minn. That's significant for solution providers because although perceived security and compliance issues need to be addressed to get an IT project off the ground, operational issues often wind up tripping up IT organizations more. As a consequence, solution providers would be well-advised not only to listen to what customers perceive as their IT issues, but also to understand what their actual IT operations challenges are. Not surprisingly, communicating often winds up being the biggest challenge. In fact, the survey finds that less than half the respondents said their organizations are good at communicating and demonstrating the business impact of an IT investment.