Everything I read about the globalization of IT and business leads me to conclude that it's the IT equivalent of Mission: Impossible. There are substantial barriers everywhere you look: cultural, political, regulatory, infrastructural, technical and human ones.

So, it can't be done. Yet there it is, swiftly taking shape as the Next Big Thing for companies doing business on the Web. Globalization is really "an inescapable force in business -- one that can boost your career or leave you behind." Easy for us to say, huh?

A CEO friend who works with CIOs at multinational companies points out that "global" has become shorthand for anything that isn't local or in your time zone. "The way to think of global business," he says, "is that it's outside your normal realm of understanding. It becomes 24-hour and multicultural. Once that happens, you'd better have an organization that reflects that kind of behavior." Of course, few organizations do.

Consider the technology problems that a worldwide business encounters today. Telecommunications support overseas is uneven at best and may cost 10 times what a similar service in the U.S. does. The hardware and software underpinning your native e-business, the prime mover for globalization, seldom match their capabilities abroad. So you end up dealing with multiple firms that are strangers to you. Bandwidth is still limited, wireless is immature and infrastructures are a mess. There are no international standards for invoicing, exchanging data or performing some of the most basic business functions electronically.

On the plus side, an increasing number of countries are racing to make legal and infrastructure improvements to attract foreign businesses. "The trend is to deregulate and basically open up to the forces of globalization," observes Bruce McConnell, the former White House official who led the International Y2k Cooperation Center and now heads up his own international consulting firm. But the corporate and cultural problems remain daunting, ranging from language barriers and IT talent shortages to a regulatory nightmare of tax codes, privacy laws and security concerns.

So what's an IT leader to do, given this global catch-22? The best starting point is awareness. Once you start thinking globally, you'll be asking different questions of your vendors and looking for different skills in your employees. Just start tapping into the problem-solving mind-set that got you interested in IT in the first place. The world awaits you.

» posted by ITworld staff

Computer World

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