Today’s IT leader, perhaps now more than ever, has to sell the business value of new technology initiatives. “As with any sales transaction, a level of trust needs to be established before the buyer is inclined to buy,” says Greg Bentham, vice president of cloud Infrastructure Services at Capgemini North America. “The way this trust is established is through a solid business case, where the hard and soft dollar values are clearly articulated in a manner where the stakeholder is inclined to buy.”
“The edge is where the action is right now,” says Burns of SPR. IT leaders can use this to their advantage, analysts say. “The good thing is [in many cases], the business is sold on the edge idea and therefore, [may] not need meaningful convincing,” says Yugal Joshi, vice president at management consultancy and research firm Everest Group. “Given edge is a transformation story…the business case is already clear in the mind of many business leaders.”