To maximize the value that IT adds to our organizations, it’s critical for us to be cognizant of business requirements and to focus our technology capabilities on meeting them.

It can be hard to keep this top of mind when racing against the clock to fix a network outage or meet a big project deadline.

So right now, while you are listening to The Next Level, we’re going to hone in on the business end of IT and get strategies for how technology can be better put to business use.

Today we are joined by Denise Donohue and Russ White, the authors of The Art of Network Architecture: Business-Driven Design. This well-reviewed book provides unique insights into modern network design models that put the business needs at the center of a network architecture.

Denise Donohue is a Business Architect at NetCraftsmen, Cisco Press author, and CCIE. Follow Denise on Twitter and check out her posts at NetCrafstmen. Russ White is a Network Architect, author, CCIE, CCDE, and CCAR. You can follow Russ on Twitter or check out his blog ntwrk.guru.

Show Notes:

-Breaking down silos

* Learning to ask questions

* Engineers need to broaden our knowledge

-Focus on the problem

* What are you trying to solve?

* Don’t just fight the last war – create new ways to fight

* Plan to move out of your comfort zone. This applies to the whole business, not just specific engineers. This is a culture issue that takes time

-Think seriously about when the technology pushes your business architecture

-Evaluate technologies not just based on what’s new, but also where you want to concentrate your internal efforts. Is this the right time to take the time and energy change your processes?

* Be nimble as a business – as technology changes, you’re going to have to change the way your business does business

* Take control of the flow of technology in your network (build your own/minimize feature set so that can use any vendor)

* Outsource IT – move everything to the cloud. Still takes network to get there, but is much simpler than building a data center, and buffers you from technology changes in the data center

-Remember that you are an IT company no matter what your business does.