Digital’s impact on IT: 50% of companies already have a “two speed model”

The Economist has a short (but interesting) little article on the impact of digital on IT departments. A few numbers that caught my eye:

• About 50% of companies practice some form of “two speed IT”. i.e. A part that keeps the lights on, and other part that gets to do the innovative/fun stuff. I didn’t expect this percentage to be so high.
• ~5-6% of companies now have a chief digital officer. About time.

My takeaway: IT departments are pretty much universally under fire from their customers (often for good reason). The speed & innovation required from digital are making it worse for them. It’s about time they handed off the “non core” items (e.g. think email) to external providers and focused on actually trying to add value.

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