Utility computing: Just because you can, should you?

Almost two-thirds of companies have little or no strategic IT planning. That was the troubling conclusion of a recent survey conducted by analyst CSC, which also showed that only 7 percent of those questioned claimed to have a technology plan properly aligned with their corporate strategy.

Worrying stuff indeed, especially as the survey also showed that those companies who do think strategically are twice as likely to have high returns on technology investments as those without.

Intrigued by CSC's claims that most companies are stumbling around in the dark, I decided to seek out a second opinion to see if the survey was accurate or just analyst puff. Meta Group analyst Brian Burke wasn't surprised by CSC's results at all. He admitted that in his experience it seems the that the whole concept of strategic planning has fallen out of favour on a corporate level.

The idea of having a grand plan for the entire organisation with defined goals has been gradually phased out and replaced with a new imperative: Now! Ideals have been replaced by pragmatism with companies changing focus on a whim to harvest new areas of revenue in increasingly competitive markets.

"In terms of doing classic strategic planning, which is having a five-year plan, we are not seeing that. Most companies don't plan at a corporate level in this way so clearly it's impossible for IT to plan strategically," says Burke.

According to Meta Group's analysis, about 65 percent of companies have some kind of corporate strategy. That leaves about 35 percent of companies that do little to document strategy in any way at all.

Burke says that when he started in IT 20 years ago it was in a strategic planning group, quite common for the time. But for a variety of reasons this kind of long-term thinking has slowly been replaced by a fast-paced and reactive management culture.