Learnings From Bimodal IT's Failure

As we discussed in the previous chapter, most organizations have a diverse application landscape with applications distributed across Systems of Record, Systems of Differentiation, and Systems of Innovation, all of which require different types of infrastructure and operating models to support them. To address this, organizations typically have multiple different approaches to managing core business applications and the supporting infrastructure with one model and the more innovative, fast-moving, experiment-focused applications and the supporting infrastructure in another model. Gartner came up with a no-longer popular model for this called bimodal IT, which talks about how organizations can build and manage two different IT operation modes to support the diversified applications and the corresponding infrastructure landscape. As part of this chapter, we will introduce the concepts behind bimodal IT, how it was operationalized, the limitations...

Introduction to bimodal IT

Gartner introduced bimodal IT in 2014 as a way for organizations to better manage their IT operations and stay competitive in the digital era. Gartner defines bimodal IT as “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability (Mode 1) and the other on agility (Mode 2).” Mode 1 focuses on maintaining and managing the existing technology landscape, while Mode 2 focuses on quickly developing and deploying new applications/features to meet the changing needs of the business. The goal of bimodal IT is to align IT with the overall goals of the organization and simplify complexity and manage costs while maintaining the necessary level of service. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, with a focus on safety and accuracy. From the previous chapter, where we covered applications and infrastructure categorization, you can think of Mode 1 as the model that supports Systems of Record applications and traditional...

Enterprise IT management with bimodal IT

Thanks to the demands of employees and customers on enterprise IT under digital transformation, IT must be faster and smarter in the face of digital disruption, rapidly evolving markets, and new ways of working and doing business while still retaining the control and oversight required to guarantee compliance and security. Bimodal IT addresses this challenge by balancing the stability, safety, and accuracy of legacy in-house IT investments (also known as Mode 1) with the agility, speed, and innovation of continuous delivery through cloud services and applications (also known as Mode 2). Gartner predicted that organizations that can master bimodal IT will be in a strong position to compete in the digital business era, while those that cannot will struggle to keep pace with the rapidly changing IT landscape. Some examples of bimodal IT exploration are as follows:

• ING Bank
• General Electric
• Telstra

Most of these implementations...

The challenges and limitations of bimodal IT in the distributed future

With digital transformation and cloud adoption accelerating in the last few years, all the corresponding changes that IT organizations are implementing to support this has added new unforeseen complexities that bimodal IT is not built to handle. One aspect that was highlighted by many organizations was that bimodal IT is not new. Irrespective of Gartner creating a model and guidelines, many organizations implemented bimodal IT based on the model they were already familiar with by building two separate teams and operations model, which created two incompatible and often rivaling visions and priorities that organizations were trying to get away from in the first place. As early as 2017, International Data Corporation (IDC), in their 2017 CIO outlook, predicted that by 2019, the CIOs who had implemented bimodal IT will accumulate a crippling technical debt, resulting in spiraling complexity, costs, and lost credibility...

Summary

In this chapter, we explained how Gartner’s bimodal IT proposed a model to address the challenge of building and maintaining a diverse technology landscape with different modes of operations. The outcomes of this were improved agility, better risk management, greater innovation, increased collaboration, and an improved customer experience.

We also walked through the challenges and limitations of adopting bimodal IT in the ever-evolving enterprise IT landscape and why it is marked as inadequate to operate enterprise IT.

In the next chapter, we will discuss how hybrid cloud adoption is becoming a standard deployment model, as well as some of the key business and technical capabilities it provides.

Further reading (and listening)

For more information about the topics covered in this chapter, please refer to the following links and research on your own:

• Bimodal IT: How to Be Digitally Agile Without Making a Mess: https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/2798217
• 10 things you need to know about bimodal IT: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-bimodal-it/
• bimodal IT (bimodal information technology): https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/bimodal-IT-bimodal-information-technology?_gl=1*1an3v4z*_ga*Mzg1NTgwNzY5LjE2NzY5NDk3MDA.*_ga_TQKE4GS5P9*MTY3Njk0OTY5OS4xLjEuMTY3Njk0OTc0MS4wLjAuMA..&_ga=2.15040502.1110145717.1676949700-385580769.1676949700
• Who is a DevOps engineer?: https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/devops-engineer
• Podcast (why we didn’t agree on bi-modal IT): https://www.buzzsprout.com/991558/436255. Let’s Bury Bimodal Thinking in Enterprise IT: https://devops.com/lets-bury-bimodal-thinking...