The IT department's dilemma is that their day-to-day role in ensuring the stability and integrity of the IT systems together with maintaining information security, provides little time and resource to concentrate on future proofing the IT architecture. If any part of the IT systems falls over, no one cares about the vision that the IT Director / CIO has for the future of the IT infrastructure. All they want is the current system to be put back on line as quickly as possible – and most people can’t even wait that long! On the other hand, if the IT system is up and running efficiently all the time, then there is little praise and the IT department is taken for granted. The Catch-22 is that IT budgets are under pressure with the result being, in many instances, staff cuts and project cancellations.

A tendency towards commoditisation and modular IT infrastructures has enabled companies to benefit from re-usable and scaleable building blocks and, to a large degree, off-the-shelf business applications. However, the proliferation of the “digitally connected economy” has meant increasing pressure on IT resources and personnel leading to some or all of the following challenges: