Don't Treat Your IT Needs In "Silos" - SimCorp White Paper

Tom Burroughes

14 May 2012

Industry jargon such as reference to business “silos” will appal linguistic purists but financial technology firm SimCorp makes no apologies in using the term in a new paper exploring how businesses go wrong with technology.

SimCorp, which provides investment management software and other services, has released a new white paper report, called The Silo Effect: Losing the Game with a Decoupled IT Strategy.

First published in the SimCorp Journal of Applied IT and Investment Management, the paper is authored by Bruno Bonati, independent consultant, Frank Furrer, independent consultant, and Stephen Murer, managing director and chief architect for Credit Suisse. (To view the paper in full, click here.)

The paper describes the “silo effect,” when business units with individual IT budgets implement changes at the same time without co-ordinating in a strategic way. This can hit efficiency. Highly fragmented IT systems can hurt, rather than benefit, a business.

To develop a cohesive IT architecture, the authors of the paper recommend:

-- Align business and IT via “managed evolution”, steering the evolution of an enterprise’s information system to increase efficiency in developing and operating the system;

-- Architecture management: break large information systems down into domains, providing more manageability;

-- Integration architecture: define the appropriate coupling and decoupling of the system’s components to ensure stability;

-- Develop a holistic IT strategy through more formal coordination in strategic business-IT alignment and ensure decision-making is made in a well-balanced way;

-- Embed the IT organisation in the investment management business it serves.