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Infrastructure is a major issue today as it is the crucial determinant of how easily corporations can respond to the increasingly urgent demands of their executives. ‘We need it now’ is an e-business mantra. IT directors can only deliver if they have an appropriate infrastructure. This Report illustrates how companies are setting about meeting the challenge of building the e-business infrastructure.

What makes the challenge so taxing is that most companies already have an installed base of technology that represents a major sunk cost. The installed base is highly complex in many cases, consisting of multifarious disparate components. To replace it with a new, more unified platform is time-consuming and risky. It will also be subject to the pressures that result in platform fragmentation; everyone has to confront the problem of enormous pressure towards fragmentation.

At the same time, new technology suppliers are emerging in the form of more mature and sophisticated outsourcing vendors and, more radically, application service providers (ASPs), who may enable companies to finesse the infrastructure problem (though they are not yet mature enough to achieve this).

In this Report, we view infrastructure not only in terms of technology but also in the wider context of:

• various sources of supply of technology platform services
• expertise and skills required to deliver infrastructure technology
• processes required to manage them
• complementary investments required to enable IT infrastructure to deliver appropriate e-business solutions.

The Report will resonate most with senior IT executives but is in fact highly relevant to senior business executives – technology is merely the context for what is essentially an organizational and management issue.

In conclusion, the Report reflects the process of building e-business infrastructure. It sees infrastructure as a dynamic process to be managed rather than as a state to be achieved. Today, it is fundamentally about preparing organizations for a continually changing business environment. There is no technology blueprint, rather multiple approaches that contribute to an organization’s ability to respond to and deliver e-business.

Click here to view a summary of each chapter or here to view or download the contents listing.