How the modern IT team should look

IT teams need to evolve in order to meet new challenges -- make sure you have got the right in-house and outsourced resource with this analysis.

IT teams are evolving. The old model of a Finance/IT director supported by Infrastructure and Application managers, with a host of network engineers and developers, is changing to meet new challenges.

In most organizations, IT used to be almost entirely about finance: sales, cash flow, payroll and purchasing. Organizations often developed their own software and built their own networks. They needed network engineers, a Wintel team, a mainframe team... Now, much of the software is off-the-shelf, running on commodity hardware, or abstracted to SaaS -- the CIO has emerged to coordinate it all.

The Chief "I" Officer role is complex. Officially the "I" stands for Information, but it includes Infrastructure, Intelligence, Integration and Innovation. In a large organization, some of these might be individual job descriptions, or they might be bundled into other roles: Architecture, Business Change, Service Aggregation, SaaS, PaaS, MSP, Cloud Storage, Cloud Compute, Disaster Recovery, Governance, Compliance, Business Intelligence, Infrastructure.

Every organization is different. The number of people you need to fulfill all the roles depends on the size of the organization, the market sector in which it operates, and to some extent on location and legacy. Here’s a selection of the sort of people most mid-to-large organizations need in IT.

The IT architect uses IT to meet specific business requirements. IT architects focus on the cost/benefits of investments in IT. This requires skill in planning, implementing, and managing infrastructure and applications.

Business intelligence analysts use data to improve efficiency and profits. They may work for an organization or play a consultancy role. Data mining the organization’s records, they can understand where the organization stands, where they can improve and where they can reduce costs.

The chief compliance officer is primarily responsible for overseeing and managing all regulatory compliance issues within an organization. Compliance with data protection and ensuring privacy and security in IT are all so important that this particular aspect may be a separate role.

Orchestrating this changing mix of in-house professionals and outsourced services is a huge job, some of which can itself be outsourced. A carefully designed SLA with a good managed services provider (MSP) can take a lot of weight off the CIO’s shoulders.

Remember:

• The IT landscape is changing constantly – your IT team needs to evolve with it, to keep up with the times.
• Plan intervals to reassess your organization’s requirements for in-house resource and outsourced services.
• The job of orchestrating a changing mix of in-house professionals and outsourced services can itself be outsourced to experts.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Image Credit: Syda Productions / Shutterstock