Information Technology Challenges

I asked the following question on LinkedIn earlier this week and received some very insightful responses:

What are the top challenges in IT organization’s today?

In reading the various magazines, blogs and websites out there (CIO.com, etc) on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many many issues facing IT groups today. What are the top challenges that most IT organizations are facing today? What is keeping CIO’s up at night in today’s environment?

If you haven’t tried out LinkedIn yet, you should…there are some great folks over there as well as some excellent information available in the Questions / Answers Section.

I received some excellent responses…and most were on target with my own thoughts.  Prior to asking the question, I thought that the issues that were in the front of many IT leaders were:

• Find and Keeping Talent
• Business / IT Alignment
• IT Strategy
• Outsourcing

The responses received from other LinkedIn users seem to back up my original thoughts.  There were other issues listed (System integration, Merger and Acquisition Due Diligence, etc) that were very interesting to see as well.

It’s interesting to get the feedback from people in the field on what they see as huge issues.  An interesting point to note, none of the responses seemed to be from CIO’s of an organization…all were from people who seem to be at a more tactical level than strategic level.

Why is this important?  To me, it says that there are a lot of people in IT with the business savvy to see the challenges that is facing them and their organization.  Why then are these same IT folks being told that they aren’t “business savvy” and need to start speaking “like business people“?  It sounds to me like there are plenty of business savvy people in IT but very few people on the ‘business’ side of things that have really reached out to these folks to get their opinions.

Any additional challenges for IT groups that have been overlooked (either in my post or in the responses on LinkedIn)?