However, I have also seen where decisions are made without the knowledge of the IT Department only to find out that they either wouldn’t work in the current environment, or that additional costs are needed that were not planned into the project. If you read any new medium-sized or large application that is not SaaS, ASP, or Cloud there are usually minimum technical requirements. Often just sharing this with your IT head will let you know if the existing infrastructure has the capability to support the new application.

I am of the absolute belief that business drives technology. Unfortunately, many technology people in the past have either not understood this critical philosophy or chose to ignore it and therefore IT is often dismissed because they do not understand the business. There is nothing more important to an IT Manager/Director than understanding the business, where the business is going, and planning for that future. This can not be done by the IT Manager, but has to be done with a collaboration of the firm leadership, the segment leaders, and the technology leader. It is when one makes decisions in a silo that mistakes are often made. This is also true among the segment leaders. If each of the segment leaders is able to make decisions based upon what is best for their segment and not what is best for the firm, then you can have disparate systems that provide no cross-functionality.