Firms need to standardize, simplify and even outsource many generic business functions and processes if they want to reduce costs and improve responsiveness. The same applies to IT; if it is going to participate more in the creation of advanced services and ‘smart products’, it first has to save itself from drowning in low-value work. Rather than just keeping legacy systems ticking over, IT should seek to eliminate many of them through standardization and outsourcing to specialized suppliers.

This report presents the first results of a programme of research into IT infrastructure and the increasingly strategic role it will play.

It is based on interviews with 17 large organizations in the US and Europe, most of whom believe that, in order to manage complexity and control costs, they will have to reduce many current systems to standard services and rely much more on standard ‘components’ in new systems development.