Editor’s Note: Work together

Whether integrating technologies, business processes or job functions, working together is essential for any organization.

Lafe Low

The phrase “working together” as a mantra for IT can take on many meanings. It can mean integration, it can mean collaboration, and it can mean true business and IT alignment, and cross-departmental and cross-functional cooperation to accomplish common goals.

At its most basic, working together can mean integration of software solutions, such as the System Center family of products. The System Center family of products, from Configuration Manager to Virtual Machine Manager, all work together to help you manage your IT infrastructure in the most efficient manner possible.

Most often, “working together” conjures up images of a workgroup or team collaborating on the same project. This is the primary purview of SharePoint. SharePoint is the common worktable, the common desk, the common war room that binds teams across departments, across different facilities and job functions—even across continents and time zones.

Working together can also mean IT and business moving in lockstep to accomplish a common business goal. SharePoint can facilitate this type of cross-functional collaboration. This month’s piece by Steve Wright and Corey Erkes, “Brand your SharePoint sites,” is a classic case of the need for business unit managers and IT to work together on a common goal. When it comes to a project like building SharePoint sites that fit within a corporate branding standard, business and IT leaders have to work together. IT has to understand the business leaders’ needs, and business leaders need to understand IT to realize how they can implement their requirements when it comes to presentation, use of fonts, colors and other specifications.

While it’s not always as easy as it sounds, or certainly as easy as it should be, working together is essential. It’s not about IT or business, it’s about the organizational goals. And when it comes to technology, a collaboration platform like SharePoint is uniquely qualified and uniquely positioned to facilitate true teamwork.

Work with us

We’re in this together. Work with us and let us know what’s happening at your organization. Also let us know what you think of the coverage on TechNet Magazine. Sign up for our LinkedIn group, send us an e-mail to <tnmag.microsoft.com> or e-mail me directly.

Lafe Low is the editor in chief of TechNet Magazine*. A veteran technology journalist, he’s also the former executive editor of 1105 Media’s* Redmond magazine.