IT Strategy and Architecture: Creating an Enterprise Model to Support IT Strategic Planning

The IT strategy of many organisations has evolved over a period of time rather than been purposely defined, and in many cases is not actually documented. However, businesses and customers expect IT systems and services to meet the requirements of the organisation with the consequent need for translating the organisation’s objectives into IT strategy and capabilities, in order that together they can respond to the rapidly-changing environment. The adoption of an end-to-end architectural approach can help with IT strategy planning and execution.

KEY FINDINGS
There needs to be a clear understanding of the enterprise goals and the role that the business expects IT to play.
To remain competitive, organisations must urgently address the growing dislocation between strategy and IT deliverables.
Defining an IT strategy is of little value if organisations are unable to measure the effectiveness of that strategy in delivering value.
Enterprise Architecture must take a leadership role in IT strategy and service delivery.
Special attention should be paid to the people and process aspects of Enterprise Architecture.
An enterprise model needs to be communicated in each stakeholder’s ‘language’, as well as being relevant to senior management and solution architects.
Architecture can benefit from a metrics-based and performance analytics-driven approach.
For architecture to become a respected discipline there needs to be additional encouragement.
Organisations should take a portfolio-based approach to selecting IT investments.

CATALYST
IT organisations are under pressure to develop an effective strategy and to deliver services that can support changing requirements. An architectural approach can offer a useful framework within which organisations can plan and execute IT strategy.

ANALYSIS

Introduction

The IT strategy of many organisations has evolved over a period of time rather than been purposely defined, and in many cases is not actually documented. However, businesses and customers expect IT systems and services to meet the requirements of the organisation with the consequent need for translating the organisation’s objectives into IT strategy and capabilities, in order that together they can respond to the rapidly-changing environment. The adoption of an end-to-end architectural approach can help with IT strategy planning and execution.

In order to improve competitiveness, organisations must urgently address the growing dislocation between the business requirements and IT deliverables. This issue is directly impacting the enterprise’s ability to make quick, accurate decisions and is causing slow implementation of the IT strategy. The gap between IT capability and business needs cannot be allowed to continue. Additionally, many organisations are struggling to highlight the value that IT is delivering to the businesses. Enterprise Architecture provides a useful framework within which organisations can address governance requirements by better planning and the ability to prove compliance, as well as providing an improved understanding of the value of technology investments.

Business Issues

Many IT strategies are assessed and updated yearly as part of the budgeting process and Enterprise Architecture initiatives are developed as isolated, ‘ivory-tower’ endeavours. A better method is to adopt an iterative process, and to use the opportunity to begin to translate IT strategy into reusable deliverables through architecture. This involves the adoption of an architectural approach, rather than the use of tactical undertakings where there is a possibility of reverting back to a siloed mentality, as there is no mechanism in place to interpret strategy and control delivery through the use of architecture, policies, patterns, and common standards.

The IT strategy must address the capabilities required to design and deploy IT solutions, and the way in which the organisation will exploit these capabilities to create business value, both of which must be measured to gauge their success. The IT capabilities include technology infrastructure, business applications, IT processes and services, and skills, which enable a portfolio of IT-enabled business projects and programmes. A balanced scorecard approach provides a unified view of IT strategy performance across all of these dimensions.

Enterprise Architecture is an important company asset that has to be managed and updated on an ongoing basis to ensure relevance is maintained. To successfully adopt Enterprise Architecture there has to be complete buy-in across the entire organisation, with an understanding of the allocation of the roles and responsibilities. Technology and business areas within the enterprise must work together to ensure that the architecture keeps in line with the strategic objectives of the company and adequately reflects the IT services available now and planned for the future.

Attempts to align IT strategy with an abstract business vision or strategy are doomed to failure, and within the Enterprise Architecture domain, an enterprise model is a way to deconstruct business strategy and objectives into something that is more tangible, and into which the other elements of the business environment can be integrated. Butler Group recommends an incremental approach based on continuous improvement when developing an enterprise model, focused at meeting the business objectives and where value can be delivered quickly. This can be achieved by the model only depicting just enough architecture to enable decisions to be made and by growing the model iteratively over time.

The belief is that Enterprise Architecture and engaging with senior management to define a top-level business architecture and enterprise model has become a necessity for any organisation wishing to effectively interpret IT strategy, and successfully utilise technology as an enabler for business agility and change.

http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/IT-Strategy-and-Architecture-Creating-an-Enterprise-Model-to-Support-IT-Strategic-Planning-13948.html

Drug and Device Combination – Aarkstore Enterprise

Drug-device combination is defined as the combination of drugs and medical devices that can be chemically or physically united or co-packaged as separate, cross labeled products. The commercialization cycle from R&D to product shows the immense potential of the bundled offering. Currently, the market has a potential of US$10.6 billion and has been experiencing a growth of 15% CAGR for the past two years. In the next five years, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.8%. A future view of the drug-device combination is that these products will make single component medical devices obsolete.

The drug-eluting stents (DES) market is the largest segment in the drug-device combination market. This is supported by the fact that cardiovascular applications constitute about 64% of the entire drug-device combination applications market. However, it is the relatively smaller market of antimicrobial catheter that offers the highest growth potential over the next five years in the overall market.

The DES market is further segmented into stent grafts, coronary stents and peripheral vascular stents. Though coronary stents has the highest market share, peripheral vascular stents is expected to have the highest growth rate till 2014. The fastest growing macro-market of antimicrobial catheter is segmented into micro-markets such as urological catheter, cardiovascular catheter, peripherally inserted central catheter, oximetry catheter, thermodilution catheter and wound drainage catheter. Closed loop glucose monitor and insulin pump is also expected to record a high growth rate for the period 2009 to 2014. The two major segments: steroid eluting electrodes and photodynamic therapy are estimated to see the slowest growth rate due to a slow development of new products in these markets.

The challenges crippling the growth of the market in the future are expected to be the issues involved in cross industry partnerships, jurisdiction issues, patient safety and interoperability issues.

The drug-device combination market is not fragmented and the key players in this market are Medtronic, Boston Scientific Corp., Edwards Life sciences Corp., Stryker Corp., QLT Inc. etc. The maximum number of new product developments is expected to take place in the bone graft substitutes, advanced wound care products and antimicrobial catheter markets. Our patent analysis indicates that E.U. has filed for the maximum number of patents followed by the U.S.

There is an immense scope of collaboration between the drugs and medical devices companies in the areas of closed loop glucose monitor and insulin pump, bone graft substitutes and advanced wound care products market. However, the antibiotic bone cements and advanced wound care market is expected to face stiff competition in the next five years to come.

The incremental benefits of these combination products over the regular medical devices are increased efficiency, reduction in overall cost of treatment along with the rising awareness. The market holds significant opportunity for the early movers albeit with extensive research to develop new and improved products at competitive prices. Successful strategic alliances between companies from the drugs and medical devices areas assist them in taking advantage of the existing technologies by avoiding capital expenditure in R&D and take the drug-device combination market to new heights.
 

What makes our reports unique?

1. We provide the longest market segmentation chain in this industry- not many reports provide market breakdown upto level 5.

2. Each report is about 250 pages with 100+ market data tables, 40 competitive company profiles, analysis of 300 patents and minimum 50 micro markets, which are collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

3. No single report by any other publisher provides market data for all the segments viz products, services, applications, ingredients, technology, and stakeholders in a single report for all the four geographies – US, Europe, APAC, ROW.

4. We provide 10% customization- normally it is seen that clients do not find specific market intelligence that they are looking for. Our customization Our customization will ensure that you necessarily get the market intelligence you are looking for and we get a loyal customer.

5. 15 pages of high level analysis including benchmarking strategies, best practices and the market?s cash cows (BCG matrix). We conduct detailed market positioning, product positioning and competitive positioning. Entry strategies, gaps and opportunities are identified for all the stakeholders.

6. Comprehensive market analysis for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, medical device manufacturers, pharma-research labs, doctors, physicians and hospitals, medical/pharma associations, retailers and super-retailers, technology providers, and research and development (R&D) companies.

Key questions answered

1. Which are the high-growth segments/cash cows and how is the market segmented in terms of applications, products, services, ingredients, technologies, stakeholders?

2. What are market estimates and forecasts; which markets are doing well and which are not?

3. Where are the gaps and opportunities; what is driving the market?

4. Which are the key playing fields? Which are the winning edge imperatives?

5. How is the competitive outlook; who are the main players in each of the segments; what are the key selling products; what are their strategic directives, operational strengths and product pipelines? Who is doing what?

Powerful Research and analysis

The analysts working with MarketsandMarkets come from renowned publishers and market research firms globally adding their expertise and domain understanding. We get the facts from over 22,000 news and information sources, a huge database of key industry participants and draw on our relationships with more than 900 market research companies across the world. We, at MarketsandMarkets, are inspired to help our clients grow by providing qualitative business insights with our huge market intelligence repository.

For more information, visit us at:
http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/Drug-and-Device-Combination-2009-2014–16959.html

Global Weight Loss and Diet Management – Aarkstore Enterprise

Global Weight Management Market Report aims to identify and analyze products and services that specifically induce weight loss and enable individuals to maintain weight. The global weight management market is estimated to reach US$586 billion in 2014 from about US$363 billion in 2009.
 
Device and accessories is the largest market under weight management, and is expected to be US$181 billion in size by 2014, owing to the role of brands targeting the youth, and growing adoption rate in the female population. However, the highest CAGR of 14.7% from 2009 to 2014 is expected to come from the services segment. Artificial sweeteners used in low calorie food and beverages such as hoodia gordonii, inulin etc are driving the CAGR of ingredients in low calorie F&B to about 11.2% from 2009 to 2014. Emergence of new artificial sweeteners that claim to preserve the traditional flavors are gaining in demand.
 
 Weight management service market is lucrative as it exhibits the highest CAGR over the period of 2009 to 2014. There are not many food chains which specialize in serving health food. Diet chains service providers are now expanding this low tapped segment by providing better and healthy food.
 
 The market is currently restrained due to a confused positioning. Number of weight loss methods available in the market are making it difficult for market players to drive brand recall among the consumers. Failed attempts to reduce weight by the consumers discourage them to go in for further weight loss trials. Hence it is very essential for market players to understand the target audience and their specific needs to provide them umbrella solutions.
 
 The significantly high rate of new products in the weight management segment necessitates industry participants to adopt proactive strategies. Moreover, the larger chunk of the market is not only driven by significant products such as fitness devices and food market, there also exist added opportunities in the minor market such as for fitness accessories. This necessitates a further need to understand clearly the characteristics and demand for the micro-markets so as to obtain a holistic view of the industry. North America is the largest market for weight management. However, Europe is catching up with an expected CAGR of 10.2% during the period 2009 to 2014, owing to increased adoption of the services and products. Asian markets are expected to ensure long term growth due to increased health awareness.
 
 The weight management market is highly fragmented and dominated by the unorganized sector. The key players in the weight management market are Abbott Nutrition, GSK, Roche, Atkins Nutritionals, Brunswick, Jenny Craig, Kellogg, Merck, McNeil Nutritionals, Nestle, Reebok and Unilever. Agreements and collaborations, and new product launches are very popular strategies to combat competition. Both these strategies are consequential as several of the market players are entering into agreements and collaborations in order to promote their new products and to extend their presence in new geographies with no or very less cost compared to acquisitions. Our patent analysis indicates that rise in the obesity concerns has resulted in an apparent increase in the number of patents especially for weight loss ingredients and diet food products in 2008. 
 

What makes our reports unique?

1. We provide the longest market segmentation chain in this industry- not many reports provide market breakdown upto level 5.

2. Each report is about 250 pages with 100+ market data tables, 40 competitive company profiles, analysis of 300 patents and minimum 50 micro markets, which are collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

3. No single report by any other publisher provides market data for all the segments viz products, services, applications, ingredients, technology, and stakeholders in a single report for all the four geographies – US, Europe, APAC, ROW.

4. We provide 10% customization- normally it is seen that clients do not find specific market intelligence that they are looking for. Our customization Our customization will ensure that you necessarily get the market intelligence you are looking for and we get a loyal customer.

5. 15 pages of high level analysis including benchmarking strategies, best practices and the market?s cash cows (BCG matrix). We conduct detailed market positioning, product positioning and competitive positioning. Entry strategies, gaps and opportunities are identified for all the stakeholders.

6. Comprehensive market analysis for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, medical device manufacturers, pharma-research labs, doctors, physicians and hospitals, medical/pharma associations, retailers and super-retailers, technology providers, and research and development (R&D) companies.

Key questions answered

1. Which are the high-growth segments/cash cows and how is the market segmented in terms of applications, products, services, ingredients, technologies, stakeholders?

2. What are market estimates and forecasts; which markets are doing well and which are not?

3. Where are the gaps and opportunities; what is driving the market?

4. Which are the key playing fields? Which are the winning edge imperatives?

5. How is the competitive outlook; who are the main players in each of the segments; what are the key selling products; what are their strategic directives, operational strengths and product pipelines? Who is doing what?

Powerful Research and analysis

The analysts working come from renowned publishers and market research firms globally adding their expertise and domain understanding. We get the facts from over 22,000 news and information sources, a huge database of key industry participants and draw on our relationships with more than 900 market research companies across the world. We are inspired to help our clients grow by providing qualitative business insights with our huge market intelligence repository.

For more information, visit us at:
http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/Global-Weight-Loss-and-Diet-Management-2009-2014–16958.html