Flexicurity of IT: Culture eats strategy for breakfast

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“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, as Peter Drucker once so famously said. Disengaging these two aspects is compromising company success. A good correlation between the two can help provide a base for a healthy bottom line; however, some managers tend to “miss the time” and neglect the importance of culture. Of course, it is hard to establish a direct link between cultural change and the immediate bottom line – however, cultural changes can hit you tomorrow, for good or bad.

Traditionally in Denmark, we have a very flat structure where everyone counts and where “flexicurity” is highly valued. Going by the principle of ensuring a flexible labour market, along with providing social security to all citizens, is what the “flexicurity” concept refers to.

Let us apply this exact thought to IT – “Flexicurity of IT” means having a flexible strategy with a very high degree of security. It is a shift in IT culture. Security through deploying and managing flexible infrastructure. Security as a cultural asset.

Flexibility is provided by openness – e.g. by developing your programs and IT infrastructure elements in a structured way, or being able to move the program parts across different clouds, in-house IT, managed IT, etc. Open source is a key element. Hybrid has come to stay.

In practice, Security is often about multi-cloud management. However, it is also about putting your data with a provider that does not have access to them or can use them at all. Hence, encrypt so only you have the key! Bring- & Keep- Your-Own-Key (BYOK & KYOK) to encrypt data. Trust IT & it provides – but maintain your systems and processes to verify.

Where do you find “Flexicurity” within IT? Look for IBM Cloud. Look for Red Hat – Open Source based development (flexibility) and certified & supported (Red Hat’s value add and business model). Look for IBM Public Cloud  – it is “enterprise-grade” – Making business by being open. Go to cloud.ibm.com and see the advantages for yourself.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at PCGA@dk.ibm.com