Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology [Hardcover]

Peter Weill (Author), Marianne Broadbent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 1998

Imagine thinking about your company's information technology in the same way that you think about its investment portfolio: as a bundle of assets that - when managed right - will generate revenues and savings. Here's just such a framework for leveraging IT (technology, networks, data, and software) - one that enables business managers to make the important decisions about the potentially confounding mix of high-technology that influences near- and long-term planning, affects the ability to support customers, and dictates the flow of daily operations. Drawing upon their rigorous research with more than 100 top multinationals, the authors present a rich and varied range of examples of IT investment strategies that have reaped rewards for firms such as Citibank, Honda, Johnson & Johnson, Ralston Purina, the Development Bank of Singapore, and Telstra. This hands-on resource, compete with benchmarks and case studies, creates the common ground where both management and IT can meet, communicate their goals, and agree on the best plan for getting there.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Weill is Foundation Chair of Management (information systems) and director of the Centre for Management of Information Technology at Melbourne Business School.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (May 27, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875848303
• ISBN-13: 978-0875848303
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #337,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting new idea - but repeated over and over, April 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology (Hardcover)

The premise of this work provides a very interesting and easily recallable way of thinking of IT resources - a pyramid structure the breaks down IT into 4 major areas. The only problem is that the idea is repeated ad nauseum. There are a few interesting case studies, but the 'core ideas' could have been stated in about 1/3 the pages.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strategic Role of Infrastructure, January 26, 1999

By 

Paul St Clair Terry "empiricist" (Berkshire, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology (Hardcover)

This is an excellent analysis of the role infrastructure plays in large organizations, be they conglomerate or corporation, multinational or global.

The fundamental thesis advanced by the authors is that for the integrated, adaptive corporations of the future, infrastructure has the potential of being a long-term strategic enabler. For such corporations, the scale and longevity of enabling infrastructure requires that infrastructure investments continue to exhibit value way beyond the lifespan of existing strategies.

A distinction is made between short-term (current) strategies which are responsive to the immediate competitive environment and longer term strategic intent which drives for realization of a persistent vision of the future. Long-term enabling infrastructure which is expected to survive (and enable) several iterations of current strategy is legitimized by supporting the strategic intent of the corporation.

This redraws alignment, breaking alignment of infrastructure investment to current strategy and instead aligning it to strategic intent.

We, in Zurich Financial Services Group, are pursuing an aggressive strategy which builds on the concepts found in this text. We are redrawing the line between what is infrastructure and what is local, market-differentiating solution. By commoditizing fundamental components used to build such solutions, which are shifting more and more into infrastructure. Weaving together local solutions becomes much faster, much easier when the focus is entirely on local value-chain optimization.

This book is now required reading in ZFSG. We have bought literally hundreds of copies and distributed them amongst our senior IT professionals. Definitely a BUY recommendation.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REQUISITE READING for Information Age strategists., March 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology (Hardcover)

Information technology has made possible the Information Age. Today, organizations are wrestling with the monumentally complex decisions about how to invest in this ever-advancing technology-investment decisions that are shaping the competitive destiny of corporations. How such decisions are made and how they should be made is at the heart of this book.

The central theme is linking strategy with a firm's IT portfolio: its total investment in an IT infrastructure. The authors explore four approaches to such infrastructure investment decisions, ranging from none to an enabling view that positions the firm to optimize its IT core competence in a strategically flexible manner. The authors have synthesized the approach market leaders take to leveraging IT. This books reveals how IT creates business value, and how top performing firms use IT in alignment with their current and future needs and goals. The book's concluding section addresses how to manage the IT portfolio for optimum business results. The book includes, among many of its nuggests, a useful grouping of infrastructure services into 8 management clusters.

Reading this book is a delightful educational experience; it is also REQUISITE READING for all strategists. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.