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The Disconnect Between IT and the Business

Shayde Christian
Cloudera

IT and the business are disconnected. Ask the business what IT does and you might hear "they implement infrastructure, write software, and migrate things to cloud," and for some that might be the extent of their knowledge of IT. Similarly, IT might know that the business "markets and sells and develops product," but they may not know what those functions entail beyond the unit they serve the most.

The disconnect is understandable because individuals in IT and the business have different skills, training, education, and focus, but it is also surprising in that IT and the business are beyond symbiotic, they are inextricably interdependent. Both teams can take strategic steps to bridge the divide. The first step is atop the building block on which their relationship was founded: data.

Siloed Data and Communication

The common language spoken by IT and the business is data. If data is fragmented, there isn't much to say because departments will only be able to form an isolated, incomplete picture of the business landscape and marketplace. As organizations fail to share data, its value diminishes: valuable insights are difficult to generate and decision-making fails to advance business aims.

Centralizing data ecosystems is critical to break down the silo between IT and the business.

The business must survey a holistic view if they are to accelerate corporate performance, advance strategic goals, and improve customer experience; therefore, IT must aggregate and consolidate disparate data stores onto centralized data platforms, the first step to envision future success through the elusive "single pane of glass."

Industry leading companies leverage modern data architectures to affiliate data silos: data lakehouse, data fabric, and data mesh. Such designs facilitate the effective democratization of data for enterprise-grade insight generation while securing data and appropriately restricting its access. Enterprise data platforms also facilitate proper data governance and improvements in data availability, quality, and integrity. Better data means better decision making.

Disparate Systems and Tools

With aggregated, secure, governed data, IT and the business can foster a culture of collaboration.

Implementation of common systems and tools promotes real-time sharing of information and ideas. Digital transformation initiatives streamline business workflows and multiply actionable data. Investments in intuitive visualization and analytics tools make insights easier to spot.

In addition to fostering collaboration, silo busting, and improving business outcomes, the rallying of IT and the business around digital transformation will cultivate common ground. IT will develop business literacy, and they may feel less like order takers if they are offered a seat at the table. The business will increase data literacy, and they may develop an appreciation for technical complexities and thankless back-office demands.

Misaligned Goals and Objectives

Strong leadership is essential to establish and sustain effective collaboration. Of paramount importance is shared vision. Cross-functional leadership must communicate and align around corporate strategic goals. Everything IT does and delivers should be aligned to established business objectives, and IT should be empowered to decline any requests that are not.

As the business, IT effectiveness should be measured by their contribution to top line and bottom line growth and customer experience. Attribution can be difficult but not impossible. Such tight-knit alignment also strengthens accountability within the business as more effort is applied to estimating the ROI of technology requests before they are submitted to IT. Consequently, innovation will become more intentional, and the business will get more benefit from their shared services organizations.

Objectives alignment is a powerful way to repair the disconnect because it gets IT and the business speaking the same language.

What does the business do?

"They're improving customer experience and efficiency to increase top line growth 15% and profit margins 7%."

What is IT doing?

"Same thing."

Shayde Christian is Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Cloudera

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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 ...

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The Disconnect Between IT and the Business

Shayde Christian
Cloudera

IT and the business are disconnected. Ask the business what IT does and you might hear "they implement infrastructure, write software, and migrate things to cloud," and for some that might be the extent of their knowledge of IT. Similarly, IT might know that the business "markets and sells and develops product," but they may not know what those functions entail beyond the unit they serve the most.

The disconnect is understandable because individuals in IT and the business have different skills, training, education, and focus, but it is also surprising in that IT and the business are beyond symbiotic, they are inextricably interdependent. Both teams can take strategic steps to bridge the divide. The first step is atop the building block on which their relationship was founded: data.

Siloed Data and Communication

The common language spoken by IT and the business is data. If data is fragmented, there isn't much to say because departments will only be able to form an isolated, incomplete picture of the business landscape and marketplace. As organizations fail to share data, its value diminishes: valuable insights are difficult to generate and decision-making fails to advance business aims.

Centralizing data ecosystems is critical to break down the silo between IT and the business.

The business must survey a holistic view if they are to accelerate corporate performance, advance strategic goals, and improve customer experience; therefore, IT must aggregate and consolidate disparate data stores onto centralized data platforms, the first step to envision future success through the elusive "single pane of glass."

Industry leading companies leverage modern data architectures to affiliate data silos: data lakehouse, data fabric, and data mesh. Such designs facilitate the effective democratization of data for enterprise-grade insight generation while securing data and appropriately restricting its access. Enterprise data platforms also facilitate proper data governance and improvements in data availability, quality, and integrity. Better data means better decision making.

Disparate Systems and Tools

With aggregated, secure, governed data, IT and the business can foster a culture of collaboration.

Implementation of common systems and tools promotes real-time sharing of information and ideas. Digital transformation initiatives streamline business workflows and multiply actionable data. Investments in intuitive visualization and analytics tools make insights easier to spot.

In addition to fostering collaboration, silo busting, and improving business outcomes, the rallying of IT and the business around digital transformation will cultivate common ground. IT will develop business literacy, and they may feel less like order takers if they are offered a seat at the table. The business will increase data literacy, and they may develop an appreciation for technical complexities and thankless back-office demands.

Misaligned Goals and Objectives

Strong leadership is essential to establish and sustain effective collaboration. Of paramount importance is shared vision. Cross-functional leadership must communicate and align around corporate strategic goals. Everything IT does and delivers should be aligned to established business objectives, and IT should be empowered to decline any requests that are not.

As the business, IT effectiveness should be measured by their contribution to top line and bottom line growth and customer experience. Attribution can be difficult but not impossible. Such tight-knit alignment also strengthens accountability within the business as more effort is applied to estimating the ROI of technology requests before they are submitted to IT. Consequently, innovation will become more intentional, and the business will get more benefit from their shared services organizations.

Objectives alignment is a powerful way to repair the disconnect because it gets IT and the business speaking the same language.

What does the business do?

"They're improving customer experience and efficiency to increase top line growth 15% and profit margins 7%."

What is IT doing?

"Same thing."

Shayde Christian is Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Cloudera

Hot Topics

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
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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 ...