Increasingly, top management is realizing the significant impact that information technology (IT) can have on the success of the enterprise. Management hopes for heightened understanding of the way IT is operated and the likelihood of its being leveraged successfully for competitive advantage.

Successful enterprises understand the risks and exploit the benefits of IT, and find ways to deal with:

• Aligning IT strategy with the business strategy.

• Cascading IT strategy and goals down into the enterprise

• Providing organizational structures that facilitate the implementation of strategy and goals

• Creating constructive relationships and effective communications between the business and IT, and with external partners

• Insisting that an IT control framework be adopted and implemented

• Measuring IT’s performance

Boards and executive management need to extend governance to IT and provide the leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure that the enterprise’s IT sustains and extends the enterprise’s strategies and objectives. IT governance is not an isolated discipline. It is an integral part of overall enterprise governance. The need to integrate IT governance with overall governance is similar to the need for IT to be an integral part of the enterprise rather than something practiced in remote corners or ivory towers.