A Praise for Self-Service in IT Value Streams

The Changing Role of IT in Business

For as long as businesses have relied on the use of technology, IT departments have been responsible for handling essential elements, such as ERP, HR, e-mail, and networking in support of the business' operations. A great deal of what IT departments were made responsible for was related to infrastructure and software provisioning, acting as proxies between technology providers and the business, wrapping technical components and making them available to the business in a governed and maintainable way.

Although technology has, for a long time now, been seen as essential to the success of most businesses, technology departments have generally been perceived as necessary expenses (cost center) to enable them to operate. In this context, the advent of public cloud providers and all its on-demand and self-service offerings, making technology resources only one click away from the business, didn't make things easier; in reality, this fact alone put a lot of pressure on IT departments with a need to establish a deeper connection with the business strategy, understand its objectives, and play a role that is a lot more sophisticated than the old and traditional technology proxy.

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