Martin Brampton, over at Silicon.com, has a thought-provoking article this week regarding the interplay between IT and business, marketing, and other units.

Typically how well a given computer or other technical system functions is laid squarely at the feet of the IT department, for better or worse. However, as Brampton alludes, the IT department hardly functions in a vacuum (much though they might wish that they did). They are charged with implementing infrastructure whose function is already predefined and often next to impossible, or with retrofitting an already-existing system to perform new and “improved” and super-sized function. Or with implementing and maintaining a system which is destined to be faulty and insecure because management has deemed that they must only use an OS developed by this partner, or software marketed by that customer, regardless of how robust or proven it is.

Brampton uses the banking industry as an example, and what a fine example it is. Even on the ultimate end-user end of some of these systems, business needs and IT plausibility sometimes are not fully in synch, even for the simplest of needs. Those of you who have not been involved would be astonished at how difficult it can be to set up something as seemingly simple, and certainly ubiquitous, as an Internet merchant payment gateway. [Continued]