Summary

In this chapter, we explained how Gartner’s pace layered architecture classifies enterprise applications across the Systems of Record, Systems of Differentiation, and Systems of Innovation layers. We also walked through how the application characteristics differ across these layers and how they impact the infrastructure layer that supports them. This results in a diverse environment with different priorities and change resistance, which makes it difficult to adopt a standardized operating model across the organization.

In the next chapter, we will explore how enterprise IT departments adopted a bimodal approach to address these conflicting priorities, and the resulting learnings to be taken into consideration as we adopt new emerging technologies.