IT Budgets: Are Enterprise Architects Calling the Shots now?

Increasingly fewer decisions about IT are being made directly by IT departments.  The cloud is a primary area where IT is losing its grip.  A study by CapGemini found that 45 percent of decisions to use the cloud are made by business units, not the central IT group.

Ron Tolido, senior vice president for Continental Europe at Capgemini, said that “The real cloud evangelists these days seem to be on the business side and not the IT side.  Until now cloud was often considered a more technology-driven topic.”

Gartner reports that another change is increasingly occurring in the making of IT decisions.  Enterprise Architects have become major influencers on budget decisions.  Gartner found that 50 percent of IT budgets and decisions have been significantly influenced by Enterprise Architects (EAs).  Considering that global IT budgets surpass $1.1 trillion, that’s a lot of influence.  Gartner breaks that down into ‘final decision-making’ influence on $331 billion and ‘great deal of influence’ on $774 billion in IT spending.

Philip Allega, managing vice-president at Gartner, said that “Overwhelmingly we find EA practitioners focused on delivering on business value and strategic transformation. Gone are the days of just ‘doing EA’ with little value or impact.”

In a survey of 60 large government and financial service organizations, Booz & Company found that 60 percent of them were investing in Enterprise Architects as a one of top-five priorities for their organizations.

But just what or who are these Enterprise Architect practitioners?  Isn’t an Enterprise Architect just another geek in central IT?  Not always.  Enterprise Architecture encompasses three elements: people, processes and technology.

Leonard Fehskens of the Open Group wrote that “An IT-centric concept of Enterprise Architecture… will include just enough about business and people to enable practitioners to address the goal of ‘aligning IT with the business.’…  A concept of Enterprise Architecture based on the idea of enterprise as business … will include just enough about information technology and people to enable practitioners to address the goal of making IT a strategic asset for businesses…  A concept of Enterprise Architecture based on the idea of enterprise as human endeavor will emphasize the role of people, and be built around the sociology and psychology of individuals, groups and organizations, especially leadership and management as means to achieving organizational goals…  over 90% of most organizations is ‘not-IT’, and the IT-centric perspective is simply so imbalanced that it can’t ultimately prevail.”

The style of the Enterprise Architect will depend on how they weight these three components in developing the their overall perspective.  And that ultimate blend has a big impact on how budgets are being and businesses are run.