Before joining Microsoft, I used to manage a small IT department for a fast growing technology company. I found there was a constant balancing process between keeping the IT infrastructure secure and easy to manage while allowing the developers and others to do their jobs. This sometimes meant my team and I lost the battle as the creative process and expansion of the business didn’t always fit in to the managed box that we had created.

Some things haven’t changed. However the complexity of the IT leader’s role has increased significantly as the Internet and associated applications are maturing and finding their way into the business world.

Companies have long struggled with defining the role of their technology leaders, ever since typewriters first morphed into PCs and technicians had to come out of the mainframe back rooms to interact with end users. Many still have the IT department reporting into the CFO and view IT as a cost centre. But with more and more business being done online and as the sale of products and services become more dependent on technology to succeed, the perception of IT shifts from cost centre to profit centre. Consequently, the role of the IT department shifts from being merely operational and overhead to business strategic. And with that shift, IT leaders require a whole new set of expertise in addition to the technical; an understanding of business as well as an understanding of people and how they work.

Mary E. Shacklett, President of Transworld Data,  outlines four important factors that are changing the CIO’s role:

1. Data – we’ve got mounds and mounds of it and it’s only growing. With increased litigation, IT leaders can’t afford to not manage it.
2. Internet portals and application design - “As more companies move mission-critical application to the Internet, IT must get involved in adapting those apps for Web access, either through improved IT infrastructure or cloud services”.
3. Security – With the advent of #2, comes an increase in the need to understand social engineering and educate users. But also, to understand how users work to create solutions that will make it easy for users to work securely and still be productive.
4. Mobility – As the workforce becomes more mobile, potential security risks increase. According to a report by  Ponemon Institute LLC, in 2008 more than 630,000 laptops were lost at U.S. airports of which 67%  were never found. Over half of business travellers surveyed in the report say that their devices contained confidential information.

The challenges and opportunities for technology leaders have never been greater as success requires understanding the people and their habits, understand the business and its needs and understanding the technology and the possibilities.

The goal of our AlignIT tour this fall is to help IT leaders understand these challenges and how the Microsoft platform can help them meet these opportunities head on. As I do research and put together the presentations for the tour, I’ll be posting a number of blog posts relating to the way IT is changing, how to bring IT and business together and streamlining your IT infrastructure to build on what you already have and do more with what you’ve got.

You can also check out the main AlignIT website which has links to the AlignIT IT Manager Podcast series, this blog, the Ignite Your Career webcast series, plus other training and resources specifically for IT managers.