The Coming Shift in IT Department Priorities: A Microsoft Dynamics GP Perspective

The changes within IT organizations over the next five years will be significant, and smart executives are already anticipating a major shift in strategic emphasis.

I am making my predictions about the most important changes based on having attended a few Microsoft Dynamics GP Sales seminars in the past couple of months, as well as compiling experiences from some of my customers who attended Convergence.

Overall, the days of building and maintaining systems and technology will give way to the days of applying technology to solve key business problems - the real purpose of Information Technology. Microsoft officials, at Convergence and other gatherings, have been placing a great deal of effort on delivering the enterprise wide collaboration platforms around Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, accompanied by the tools to support business process management with the delivery of the new Corporate Performance Management.

Focusing on information is a real challenge and a shift in paradigms for many IT directors. For the most part, IT directors are used to making sure the corporate network and the hardware elements are in top shape to maintain the company interconnected. Don't get me wrong! Infrastructure management is a must, but certainly not enough to provide the organization and its executives with the information required to make critical business decisions day in and day out.

Hence, in the next few years organizations will see more need for project managers and business analysts as part of the core IT staff. So, what about infrastructure? As organizations move forward with the adoption of technologies like SharePoint, Corporate Performance Management, and begin to prepare for a new wave of Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrades to "v11", these responsibilities will fall more and more with infrastructure vendors and will give even more way ...