The “catch” in this is that CFOs and other corporate leaders don’t see aging IT infrastructure as risky and hazardous today — and IT has contributed to this thinking.
How? Through IT’s long history of presenting infrastructure upgrade requests in separate hardware and software line-item budgets, alongside technical justifications — e.g., maxed out processing, end of vendor support, too many users on the network, etc. — that don’t mean much to key financial decision-makers.
Changing the IT infrastructure conversation
Technical budget justifications for IT infrastructure upgrades, which are seldom linked to end business strategies, make it easy for budget decision-makers to defer IT infrastructure investment. Instead, budget decision-makers figure that the company can “make do” because IT will somehow find a way to keep systems running.