Inspired by a tweet Is it time to rename “Information technology” to “Information fabric”? Less about technology, more about access, relevance.. clearly the intent is to make the name more relevant, but i am driven back to requirements again. The name Information Fabric is too much wrapped up in itself. IT exists within a business framework and in many organizations began as a data processing department under Finance- another department which loses sight of its purpose.
Looking at the business requirements which create a need (and budget) for IT let’s call it Business Electronic Support Infrastructure. BESI (the department formerly known as IT) exists to electronically automate business processes and data storage, processing, retrieval, and analysis. It is not some Fabric or Cloud or other independent entity which gets to buy nifty expensive hardware just because us tech geeks like the blinky lights. BESI, like all other departments, exists to support the thing of value we create and for which customers want to pay.
Starting at the top BESI should enhance the business’s ability to make money. It does this by supporting the business’s value creation stream and any required ancillary functions including accounting, transaction processing, communications, etc. I suppose if you follow the tree to a low level of detail you might be able to show a business benefit from some type of cross referenced fabric, but I would name the department for its highest level requirement not a low level technical detail of implementation.
I’m also not convinced that we are close to a coherent fabric and tend to see the internet as a Noise Network rather than an Information Network, but that is another subject.
