Information technology (IT) systems are the glue that holds modern enterprises together. Managing the pressures of constant change and updates is relevant since IT systems have become highly distributed across datacenter locations and public clouds — hybrid cloud IT is a reality for most organizations. In addition, a myriad of new development technologies in cloud-native and other areas open up huge new opportunities to make development teams more productive.

This guide is designed as a strategy primer for enterprise architects and IT leaders to map out how to tackle modern IT strategy. It is focused on the convergence of three trends:

• The importance of IT systems to modern organizational success
• Hybrid cloud and the shift to multiple datacenters, platforms, and cloud locations
• Cloud-native application development technologies and how they can be combined with existing approaches to create a robust, productive IT system.