The misalignment between business and IT is an interesting conundrum that many businesses face today – regardless of industry or organizational size. Most experts believe that approximately 60 to 80 percent of the IT budget is allocated towards operations, spent on managing day-to-day activities. Nonetheless, according to industry surveys the majority of CIOs would prefer to spend much more of their IT budget on innovation. Trends such as sourcing and IT commoditization are the results of companies trying to divert a greater portion of the IT spend from the operational areas to the areas driving innovation and next generation IT solutions.

Most CIOs would much rather be recognized as a business strategist than as an operational guru. However, the reality is far from such ambitions.

How many times have we heard that IT does not deliver what the business requires?

We all know that this is not because IT doesn’t want to deliver what the business requires or that the business doesn’t want them to deliver; it is because there is a big gap between the two. The gap can be dependent on many things. And one of those is communication - including improper organizational lines of communication and lack of a common vocabulary.

According to the Gartner report “Gartner Perspective IT Spending 2010”, we will see some initial IT growth in 2010 with more growth to follow in 2011. Gartner states that “Leading the IT organization in 2010 requires a clear vision for melding technology, business process and financial management into a cohesive view of IT investments and priorities.” I couldn’t agree more and as we move into 2010, I hope to see more IT leaders becoming a driving force to business change and success.

Throughout 2010 I will continue to blog on this topic of aligning business and IT and I will be counting on the IJI technical subject matter experts and our leading consultants to weigh in on this topic and provide their knowledge of how successful organizations align software development to the real needs of the business.