Market Perspective: Fit for Use and Fit for Purpose in a Virtual Client Context

IT conversations are overloaded with discussions of technical debt, an imprecise term that obscures whether a system is overburdened, balanced, or overinvested. Using the concepts of fit for use and fit for purpose, an IT executive can make a more precise mapping of the company's digital estate and for a supplier to have a more focused, impactful conversation about where its platform fits into the executive's digital estate."For some reason, in conversation after conversation, IT executives seem to think that everything a year old is technical debt, something to be replaced as soon as possible," says Shannon Kalvar, research director, IDC. Kalvar adds, "This is not a helpful way to think about the complex system we call IT. Instead, we need to assess how well different aspects of the system of systems are doing in terms of their fit for use and fit for purpose compared with how expensive it is to retore or maintain those systems in the future."