| The first few years of the new millennium have been a challenging time for the information technology (IT) manager. The initial economic euphoria that greeted the successful completion of Y2K projects worldwide was quickly followed by a dramatic shakedown within U.S.-based industries most closely related to the growth of the Internet. Today, organizations are striving to find innovative ways to leverage in-place IT solutions to improve efficiency and effectiveness under a harsher economic climate. At the same time, technologies that hold the promise of globally ubiquitous access to distributed applications continue to be strong drivers of new business solutions and organizational change.
In this competitive environment, it is increasingly important for IT managers to be able to closely align IT investments with the organization’s strategic goals. Both a high-quality IT infrastructure and high-quality IT services are critical for any modern organization to compete. Yet it is also essential for IT leaders to continue to assess new technologies and understand the fundamental issues of how best to integrate modern information technologies — including packaged enterprise systems, Web services, wireless access technologies, peer-to-peer computing, and voice, video, and data communication technologies — to transform the ways that organizations compete and individuals work across geographically dispersed locations.
The 70 chapters in this 8th edition of the IS Management Handbook have been selected with the objective of helping our target audience, the practicing IT manager, successfully navigate today’s challenging environment. Guidelines, frameworks, checklists, and other tools are provided for a range of critical IT management topics. In addition to providing readings for our target audience of senior IT leaders, other members of the IT management team, and those consulting on IT management issues, we encourage potential adopters of this Handbook to use it as a resource for IT professional development forums and more traditional academic curricula. |