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The Strategic Evolution of IT: From Cost Center to Business Catalyst

Sharon Mandell
Juniper Networks

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership. This shift hasn't just been about changing mindsets — it's about tangible results. Research shows that digital leaders deliver average annual total shareholder returns of 8.1% vs. 4.9% for laggards, highlighting the undeniable link between technological excellence and business success.

As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes. And this mastery isn't accidental — it's the result of deliberate strategies that bridge the traditional gap between technology capabilities and business objectives.

Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Business Objectives

To meaningfully connect technology and business objectives, organizations need practical strategies that move beyond simply acknowledging IT's importance. It's about actively aligning IT initiatives with core business goals, ensuring that technology serves as a catalyst for achieving strategic outcomes. To facilitate this alignment, several approaches should be considered:

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): OKRs go beyond project and portfolio management by focusing on ambitious, measurable business outcomes that drive progress over time. By aligning their work to these outcomes, tech teams can foster a culture of accountability and transparency, ensuring everyone understands how their work supports overall business goals.

Technology Business Management (TBM): TBM analysis provides transparency into IT investments across the organization. This data-driven approach enables more informed discussions about resource allocation and strategic priorities, shifting conversations from cost control to value creation, while demonstrating IT's direct impact on business success.

Cultivating Cross-Functional Ownership: Breaking down silos between technology teams and other departments is crucial. By establishing dedicated cross-functional teams, aligned to business capabilities, tech professionals can collaborate daily and directly with colleagues from marketing, sales, operations and more. This collaborative approach fosters a deeper understanding of shared goals and ensures that technology solutions are developed with a clear awareness of business needs, allowing for seamless and purposeful integration into existing workflows.

Empowering IT Teams with AI-Native Operations

AI is revolutionizing IT operations, enabling teams to shift focus from routine maintenance to driving strategic business goals. By automating repetitive tasks and delivering real-time insights, AI empowers IT to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization, reducing distractions and aligning more closely with broader business objectives.

AI-native networking provides a clear example of this transformation, delivering up to 90% fewer trouble tickets and 9x faster deployments. This enables IT teams to reduce downtime, enhance user experiences, and devote more time to initiatives that improve customer engagement, optimize supply chains, and accelerate business growth.

Beyond networking, AI-driven operations represent a broader shift in how IT projects are approached. The traditional model of large-scale, disruptive rollouts is giving way to more agile, iterative strategies. Continuous monitoring and real-time insights allow organizations to adapt technology solutions to evolving business needs, freeing IT professionals to focus on innovation rather than firefighting.

By embracing AI-driven operations, IT teams can become true enablers of business success, helping organizations achieve measurable outcomes and maintain a competitive edge.

Fostering a Culture of Innovation and Collaboration

The most successful organizations recognize that technology-driven transformation requires more than just implementing new solutions — it demands an organization-wide cultural shift. This means evolving IT teams from traditional "order-takers" to influential decision-makers who help shape and execute business strategy. The key lies in creating an environment where innovation thrives and tech professionals feel empowered to contribute their unique perspectives to business discussions.

Organizations must invest in both the technical and business acumen of their IT talent. A dual focus on these areas enables teams to better understand the broader business context of their work and contribute more meaningfully to strategic discussions. When IT professionals can speak the languages of both technology and business, they become invaluable partners in driving broader innovation. Success in this area requires a commitment to continuous learning, mentorship programs and creating opportunities for cross-functional collaboration that expose IT teams to diverse business challenges and perspectives.

The Future of IT Leadership

As we look to the future, the role of IT will continue to evolve. The most successful organizations will be those that anticipate the transformative potential of technology and proactively weave it into the DNA of their strategic blueprints. This means:

  • Forging co-ownership between technology and business leaders
  • Sharing critical data insights across business units to drive better decision-making
  • Maintaining a focus on continuous feedback and adaptation
  • Treating technology investments as strategic assets rather than operational expenses

With technology continuing to reshape industries and markets, the question is no longer whether tech professionals should have a seat at the strategic table, but how to maximize its potential and impact on business success. The answer lies in fostering open dialogue, aligning technology with business objectives and demonstrating tangible value. Now is the time for IT leaders to claim their rightful place at the table, unlocking unprecedented possibilities and paving the way for a new era of success.

Sharon Mandell is SVP and Chief Information Officer at Juniper Networks

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Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

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In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

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The Strategic Evolution of IT: From Cost Center to Business Catalyst

Sharon Mandell
Juniper Networks

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership. This shift hasn't just been about changing mindsets — it's about tangible results. Research shows that digital leaders deliver average annual total shareholder returns of 8.1% vs. 4.9% for laggards, highlighting the undeniable link between technological excellence and business success.

As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes. And this mastery isn't accidental — it's the result of deliberate strategies that bridge the traditional gap between technology capabilities and business objectives.

Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Business Objectives

To meaningfully connect technology and business objectives, organizations need practical strategies that move beyond simply acknowledging IT's importance. It's about actively aligning IT initiatives with core business goals, ensuring that technology serves as a catalyst for achieving strategic outcomes. To facilitate this alignment, several approaches should be considered:

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): OKRs go beyond project and portfolio management by focusing on ambitious, measurable business outcomes that drive progress over time. By aligning their work to these outcomes, tech teams can foster a culture of accountability and transparency, ensuring everyone understands how their work supports overall business goals.

Technology Business Management (TBM): TBM analysis provides transparency into IT investments across the organization. This data-driven approach enables more informed discussions about resource allocation and strategic priorities, shifting conversations from cost control to value creation, while demonstrating IT's direct impact on business success.

Cultivating Cross-Functional Ownership: Breaking down silos between technology teams and other departments is crucial. By establishing dedicated cross-functional teams, aligned to business capabilities, tech professionals can collaborate daily and directly with colleagues from marketing, sales, operations and more. This collaborative approach fosters a deeper understanding of shared goals and ensures that technology solutions are developed with a clear awareness of business needs, allowing for seamless and purposeful integration into existing workflows.

Empowering IT Teams with AI-Native Operations

AI is revolutionizing IT operations, enabling teams to shift focus from routine maintenance to driving strategic business goals. By automating repetitive tasks and delivering real-time insights, AI empowers IT to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization, reducing distractions and aligning more closely with broader business objectives.

AI-native networking provides a clear example of this transformation, delivering up to 90% fewer trouble tickets and 9x faster deployments. This enables IT teams to reduce downtime, enhance user experiences, and devote more time to initiatives that improve customer engagement, optimize supply chains, and accelerate business growth.

Beyond networking, AI-driven operations represent a broader shift in how IT projects are approached. The traditional model of large-scale, disruptive rollouts is giving way to more agile, iterative strategies. Continuous monitoring and real-time insights allow organizations to adapt technology solutions to evolving business needs, freeing IT professionals to focus on innovation rather than firefighting.

By embracing AI-driven operations, IT teams can become true enablers of business success, helping organizations achieve measurable outcomes and maintain a competitive edge.

Fostering a Culture of Innovation and Collaboration

The most successful organizations recognize that technology-driven transformation requires more than just implementing new solutions — it demands an organization-wide cultural shift. This means evolving IT teams from traditional "order-takers" to influential decision-makers who help shape and execute business strategy. The key lies in creating an environment where innovation thrives and tech professionals feel empowered to contribute their unique perspectives to business discussions.

Organizations must invest in both the technical and business acumen of their IT talent. A dual focus on these areas enables teams to better understand the broader business context of their work and contribute more meaningfully to strategic discussions. When IT professionals can speak the languages of both technology and business, they become invaluable partners in driving broader innovation. Success in this area requires a commitment to continuous learning, mentorship programs and creating opportunities for cross-functional collaboration that expose IT teams to diverse business challenges and perspectives.

The Future of IT Leadership

As we look to the future, the role of IT will continue to evolve. The most successful organizations will be those that anticipate the transformative potential of technology and proactively weave it into the DNA of their strategic blueprints. This means:

  • Forging co-ownership between technology and business leaders
  • Sharing critical data insights across business units to drive better decision-making
  • Maintaining a focus on continuous feedback and adaptation
  • Treating technology investments as strategic assets rather than operational expenses

With technology continuing to reshape industries and markets, the question is no longer whether tech professionals should have a seat at the strategic table, but how to maximize its potential and impact on business success. The answer lies in fostering open dialogue, aligning technology with business objectives and demonstrating tangible value. Now is the time for IT leaders to claim their rightful place at the table, unlocking unprecedented possibilities and paving the way for a new era of success.

Sharon Mandell is SVP and Chief Information Officer at Juniper Networks

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...