Q&A: Forrester Talks About the Future Technology Management Cycle - Part 1

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

In Part 1 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, Jean-Pierre "J.P." Garbani, VP, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals at Forrester, discusses his new report: Transform Infrastructure And Operations For The Future Technology Management Cycle.

APM: In the report, you explain that IT is entering a new phase called the Business Technology Era. What is the Business Technology Era?

JP: Business becomes so deeply embodied in technology, and the technology so deeply embedded in the business, that IT needs to be managed quite differently.

The tipping point for this new state of technology and technology management arrives as technology's impact on business results becomes readily evident and only measurable in business terms. Forrester calls this state, built on and emerging from the original IT, business technology (BT), defined as pervasive technology use that boosts business results.

APM: How is the relationship between business and technology changing?

JP: As technology matured and brought new capabilities to customers, business support evolved from the simple administration of enterprises' finances and production to the administration of sales to today's focus on the customer. Each of these steps in the business-technology relationship marked a deep transformation in the way enterprises and technology management were organized.

APM: What is driving this change?

JP: This transformation is based on a deep evolution of technology:

1. Universal access to information from mobile devices.

2. The ability to collect myriad of information, understand customer behavior and analyze it (big data).

3. The ability to quickly respond to customer demand with rapid application development supported by an immediate sourcing of abstracted infrastructure (cloud) and the ability to quickly and automatically deploy these applications (DevOps).

APM: How will IT have to change to face this new environment?

JP: We believe that we are entering a new evolution cycle that will deeply transform IT into a completely different model of business integration. In this new era, workers still need access to devices to do their jobs and applications still need computing platforms, storage, and networks to run. But they may not need the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) organization to provide them. Eventually, IT will have to make room for business technology (BT) and require a new operating model of high business integration.

APM: What do you mean by “high business integration”?

JP: High business integration means that, although BT is mostly represented by systems of engagement, systems of record (IT) need to provide a foundation to make services relevant to the customer. Thus responding well to business BT demand implies that IT (systems of records) reacts also to these demands and does not drag the whole thing down. Hence the higher integration with the business.

Read Part 2 of the interview to find out what the new I&O organization will look like in the Business Technology Era.

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Q&A: Forrester Talks About the Future Technology Management Cycle - Part 1

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

In Part 1 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, Jean-Pierre "J.P." Garbani, VP, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals at Forrester, discusses his new report: Transform Infrastructure And Operations For The Future Technology Management Cycle.

APM: In the report, you explain that IT is entering a new phase called the Business Technology Era. What is the Business Technology Era?

JP: Business becomes so deeply embodied in technology, and the technology so deeply embedded in the business, that IT needs to be managed quite differently.

The tipping point for this new state of technology and technology management arrives as technology's impact on business results becomes readily evident and only measurable in business terms. Forrester calls this state, built on and emerging from the original IT, business technology (BT), defined as pervasive technology use that boosts business results.

APM: How is the relationship between business and technology changing?

JP: As technology matured and brought new capabilities to customers, business support evolved from the simple administration of enterprises' finances and production to the administration of sales to today's focus on the customer. Each of these steps in the business-technology relationship marked a deep transformation in the way enterprises and technology management were organized.

APM: What is driving this change?

JP: This transformation is based on a deep evolution of technology:

1. Universal access to information from mobile devices.

2. The ability to collect myriad of information, understand customer behavior and analyze it (big data).

3. The ability to quickly respond to customer demand with rapid application development supported by an immediate sourcing of abstracted infrastructure (cloud) and the ability to quickly and automatically deploy these applications (DevOps).

APM: How will IT have to change to face this new environment?

JP: We believe that we are entering a new evolution cycle that will deeply transform IT into a completely different model of business integration. In this new era, workers still need access to devices to do their jobs and applications still need computing platforms, storage, and networks to run. But they may not need the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) organization to provide them. Eventually, IT will have to make room for business technology (BT) and require a new operating model of high business integration.

APM: What do you mean by “high business integration”?

JP: High business integration means that, although BT is mostly represented by systems of engagement, systems of record (IT) need to provide a foundation to make services relevant to the customer. Thus responding well to business BT demand implies that IT (systems of records) reacts also to these demands and does not drag the whole thing down. Hence the higher integration with the business.

Read Part 2 of the interview to find out what the new I&O organization will look like in the Business Technology Era.

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Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

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Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

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The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...