A simplified view of the enterprise tech market

More on what that looks like in a moment.

Enterprise IT vs. the LOB and functional estate

Before I give you my simplified view of the enterprise IT tech space, I need to make a delineation. When I talk about enterprise IT, I’m talking about those technologies that IT uses to facilitate and manage its operational state — essentially, these are the control room technologies that make up the core of what I’m calling the Digital Transformation Platform that bridges the gap between functional and LOB efficiency-focused apps, and an organization’s innovation capability.

Of course, every IT organization allocates a significant portion of its resources to deploying, supporting, and managing the Line of Business and Functional Apps that are often core to delivering business value for the enterprise. This often includes things like CRMs, ERPs, and any number of industry-specific functional apps (such as an Electronic Health Record app in a healthcare organization).

By definition, these technologies and their respective support and management requirements are unique to each organization. But the technologies that I’m covering as part of my definition of Enterprise IT Tech and Digital Transformation Platforms are universal — every enterprise IT organization should have some version of them in their environment, regardless of size or industry.

This is still imperfect, but I think it’s a useful demarcation point to help enterprise IT leaders address their complex concerns and challenges.

A simple 5-category lens through which to view enterprise

With the clarification made, how should you view the enterprise IT market space in a way that is useful and helpful to addressing your real challenges, positioning yourself strategically, and delivering a transformational capability?

It comes down to understanding the fundamental process by which you should evaluate, deploy, manage, and optimize, any business process and the technologies to support it. When I look at these challenges through that lens, it becomes both clear and simple. I believe virtually every technology that exists within the enterprise is deployed through a five-stage process:

1. Every technology is initially and continually assessed against both the overall enterprise strategic mandate and the existing technology portfolio. This rationalization process is essential to ensure that any given technology delivers business value and is continually optimized against the balance of the tech estate to do so.
2. Every technology must then be stitched into the existing operational estate via data integration, whether via traditional mechanisms, so-called iPaaS services, or API-centric approaches.
3. Once operational, we must be able to continually monitor its operational state both in the moment and over time to understand current, future, and potential issues and the ramifications of changes to the estate.
4. Each technology should then be continually optimized from a business process perspective, sometimes identifying technology and automation gaps that will deliver an innovation return.
5. The adoption and user experience of the technology should be continually monitored and enhanced to capture and maintain the business value of the deployed technology.

That’s the lens. Those are the five big, meaningful buckets of core enterprise technologies that enterprise IT leaders should focus on — and those are the five sectors that I think matter from an enterprise IT perspective. Here’s what I call them:

• Business Architecture & Portfolio Management Platforms
• Data Integration & Intelligence Platforms
• IT Observability & Intelligence Platforms
• Process Discovery, Orchestration & Automation Platforms
• User Experience Management & Adoption Platforms

These five simple categories encompass an almost countless collection of analyst categories, but I believe that viewing the enterprise IT world through this simplified five-category lens aligns it with the real challenges you’re facing and will make it easier to make strategic deployment, rationalization, migration, and purchase decisions with clarity and purpose.

These will also be the five Sector Briefs that I’m going to strive to produce each year, providing you with a simple and direct way of understanding each of these process stages and how the various technology vendors within a sector can help you address your challenges in a meaningful way.

For now, try looking at your tech stack through this lens and see what happens. I’d love to hear what you think and how things change when you look at things this way.